Door Seals / Waterproofing

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Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby sherwood989 » Fri Oct 18, 2013 11:34 pm

hi everyone! New to the forum and to owning a Midas. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on door seals to use due to poor fitting doors on my Midas, its leaking water through the tops of the doors and the seals that are on it at the moment arnt helping. There are some pretty skinny ones on at the moment as I used larger ones before and couldn't get the doors to close. Any advice on this would be really great. Thanks in advance!
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby Hans Efde » Sat Oct 19, 2013 9:06 am

sherwood989 wrote:hi everyone! New to the forum and to owning a Midas. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on door seals to use due to poor fitting doors on my Midas, its leaking water through the tops of the doors and the seals that are on it at the moment arnt helping. There are some pretty skinny ones on at the moment as I used larger ones before and couldn't get the doors to close. Any advice on this would be really great. Thanks in advance!




That's a subject I have written about on my website. You can find info about it on the technical page on midascars.net. There's more than just the doorseal to make your Midas weatherproof. To start with, glue a T-seal on the doorframe:
Image
It will close the gap between the doorframe and the monocoque. works perfect.
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby chase saddler » Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:54 pm

My Mk 2 seems to leak like crazy. Is the information that Hans put on his website still available as the website seems to be down now.
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby Hans Efde » Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:59 am

chase saddler wrote:My Mk 2 seems to leak like crazy. Is the information that Hans put on his website still available as the website seems to be down now.


I am not sure that info has been placed elsewhere. Let's see if a copy/paste of the page on my computer works:



KEEP YOUR FEET DRY (NO MORE WET DREAMS).

I have a Midas Gold coupé mark 3 that is sitting outside whole year long. The first thing I discovered is that a Midas may not be completely waterproof. So the first years I drove around with the soundproofing replaced by towels, which I changed every now and then. But still the car would fog up quite badly during the autumn and winter period.

Now four years later I have been able to get my car waterproof for 99,9% with a number of modifications. Although several are typical for the coupé, especially the door modifications apply to the convertible as well.

DOORS.

The biggest holes in the monocoque exist because it is necessary for the owner of the car to get in and out. Unfortunately this is an easy target for rain, especially in combination with wind. There are 2 big problems with the doors. One is the sealing of the window frame to the monocoque and the other one is the rain that runs into the door via the window.

First start with the rubber seals. Modern cars have 2 seals, one on the door and one on the bodywork. The Midas has only one which is an old-fashioned seal as well. The round shape of the seal makes it quite easy for rain to follow its curve and seep through, wetting your seat. So I changed it for a sort of labyrinth type, see fig. 1. The seal has 2 extra edges. Water following the curve of the seal will stop at the first edge and follow its path linear to the seal downwards.

But this won't be 100% effective. So I bonded a T-seal on the window frame as indicated in fig. 2. When the door is closed, it fills the gap between the window frame and the bodywork. Heavy winds will now have a positive effect because this T-seal is pushed against the other bodywork seal and rain can't come in.

Still my carpets would get wet. I saw that water somehow would flow over the lower part of the bodywork seal and soak my carpets. It looked like it was pushed up by wind from below, between the door trim and the seal. But this puzzled me because quite a lot of water was coming in and via both doors, so not only the wind side.

Luckily one day I was working in my car when it started raining. I had removed the door trims and saw that rain ran between the window and the window-seal into the door. When the door trims would have been in place, the water would have dripped on and followed its curve.

Since the door trims must be placed INSIDE the bodywork seals, water will drip on the seal and run into the car. This can easily be solved by glueing a plastic sheet in the door. Make sure the lower edge of the plastic hangs in the door, see fig. 3 (check that the rain holes in the door aren't clogged). Fold the plastic upwards at the metal plate that holds the window mechanism, don’t cut the plastic. Another option is to bond a thin rubber strip on the door trim, so it can be watertight fitted to the door. Also an idea is to glue a small L-shaped strip at the lowest corner of the door trim to separate the waterflow. I haven’t tried this one.



SMALL STUFF.

When you have solved your wet door problems, the following could still spoil your good mood.

Wiper arm seals.

I found moisture behind my dashboard when I was installing a new radio. Because I didn't like fireworks inside my precious Midas, it was necessary to find the cause. I discovered that rain could get in via the holes of the wiper arm spindles. There should be a large rubber washer underneath the metal washer of each spindle. On my car these rubber washers were deteriorated, but were easily replaced by new ones, cut out of rubber sheet.

Subframe access holes.

There are 2 large holes in the foot wells which give access to the bolts of the front subframe. I am not sure if water spray could get in, but to be sure I glued a piece of glassfibre sheet on each hole.

Rear quarter windows.

The original Midas factory did not protect the bonding of the rear quarter coupé windows with paint. Therefore the sealant will be attacked by ultra violet rays, change into something brown and loosen its grip on the window. My windows almost fell off the car by itself, so it was time to reinstall them. I painted a small black stripe (special paint from Sikaflex) on the windows and bonded them in again. Unfortunately the half-S rubber seal to which the window must be bonded was not flush, so generous amounts of water streamed into my interior (again). I didn't want to seal the cavity between the window and the bodywork (which would be the solution in this case), so I replaced the glass windows with a pair of perspex windows that clip easily in place. I bonded an etylene-propylene rubber strip (a soft spongy rubber, also used for surf suits) on the perspex windows, that fills all the gaps between the bodywork seal and the window. It has a nice racy look (very light as well). In an other article I will give you details about how to make and fit these perspex windows.

Flush it!

Around the rear window of the Gold coupé a rain gutter in the bodywork collects the water and drains it via a small hole onto the rear bumper. Although I cleaned the hole in the gutter, I didn't check the hole just above the rear bumper. Apparently in the past leaves had fallen in and slowly clogged the drain pipe. So during heavy rain fall the rain gutter filled with water which ran over the rear window seal and wetted my interior. The dirt was removed from the drain pipe and it hasn't occurred since. But as a precaution every now and then I hose down the car and check that the rain gutter doesn't fill with water.

Hans Efdé, march 1998

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Concerning the door, in case of large quantities of water I would say the internal waterstream is the biggest culprit. so it's best to make sure the door can drain the water by 1 or 2 holes in the bottom and a plastic flap inside will guide the water to the bottom and prevent it running into the interior. Easy checked, just sit inside the car during heavy rain.
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby chase saddler » Tue Sep 15, 2015 2:37 pm

That is fantastic Hans, thank you for your very quick and very detailed reply. :D
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby billybob » Thu Dec 10, 2015 12:40 pm

sorry to revisit an old topic, but the labyrinth type door seal....is this something that can be taken off another car or is it bespoke made? If it is from another car, what car is suitable for a mk 3 convertible?

Thanks,
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby kelvink » Thu Dec 10, 2015 2:00 pm

Not sure if Alistair has some I expect he has but I bought a slightly different profile at the recent Classic Car and Restoration Show at the Bath and West Showground. I could have bought the same profile but after a fair bit of contemplation I bought a profile that is basically a U shaped channel on the same Tight-n-Fast trim. I'll try and find out what the profile numbers are for each and who it was that I bought it from. They are always at the shows but Alistair knows the profiles and has seen mine.

I think the U shaped channel works better as the water runs into it and then away from the car where the seals are vertical in the door jams. So far it's proved to work 100% and we've had a fair bit of rain though I've not driven the car very much of late.
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby Hans Efde » Thu Dec 10, 2015 2:17 pm

billybob wrote:sorry to revisit an old topic, but the labyrinth type door seal....is this something that can be taken off another car or is it bespoke made? If it is from another car, what car is suitable for a mk 3 convertible?

Thanks,


It's a generic type o-seal, not related to any car or model. But it's not the most important mod. You can buy any type o-seal, just make sure the grip is wide enough for the thick GRP wall (may o-seals are designed for thin steel sheet edges) and the diameter of the "O" is big enough. The labyrinth just adds an extra bit of dryiness. To get your car really dry, fit the T-seal on top of the frame and the inner plastic sheet inside the doors. With these mods your doors will stay bone dry.
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby kelvink » Thu Dec 10, 2015 5:50 pm

Can't find the paperwork for it but this is a photo of an offcut

SMALLrubberdoorchannel.jpg
Rubber drip channel
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Re: Door Seals / Waterproofing

Postby billybob » Thu Dec 10, 2015 6:26 pm

ahhh ok thanks both. I didn't realise it would be a long strip with a join or gap somewhere, makes sense that it is a generic item now. Where is the best place for the two ends of the rubber to meet up?

Thanks!
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