New OEM Rear Glass

[driller]

As everyone knows, a new OEM rear glass is unobtanium and has been for quite some time.

I happen to know a guy who knows a guy story...

A local detailer who has been taking care of my cars recently was commenting on the rear window seal of my '96 when I was having them do the hood/roof/trunk vinyl wrap. I explained the entire story of the rear glass on the Mark VIIIs when he interjected he had a 'glass guy' that he would have look at it. When I went to pick up the car, the 'glass guy' pulled up in his van. He examined the lasagna trim on the rear glass and stated how it was not available and it was integral to the glass, yada, yada, yada.

But he had "talked to a guy" about it the previous day who told him he thought he knew where one was. He followed up on the lead and sure enough he said he found a brand new OEM rear glass still in the crate supposedly in a glass distributor warehouse in Florida. I immediately had visions of a road trip to Florida. Turns out the detail shop owner has a residence in Florida and travels back and forth quite frequently. He offered to transport the glass, his shop would tint it and he would have the glass guy install it.

I photo documented the adventure and thought I would share...



Starting to trim the window moulding in preparation to remove the old glass with the failing tint and lasagna trim. Note the trim at the top of the glass and the side trim that has been 'tucked' as long as I have owned the car.


Here is a better pic that shows the failing tint...


After cutting more of the trim away...



Utilizing a special tool that resembled an old school key-hole saw, he inserted a rip cord through the window seal.


He then proceeded to wrap the cord around the entire edge of the glass.


Then the removal magic begins. The ends of the cord are attached to a mechanism attached to the inside of the glass with suction cups. The cord is then wound onto the rotating spools tightening the cord which pull the cord like a noose, effectively cutting through the window seal. The mechanism is frequently relocated on the glass to different positions to achieve an optimum cutting angle for the cord.


All goes well until the cord breaks and he has to start over to finish the cut. Here he is trimming the lower lip of the window seal to rewrap the cord.


After a while... the old glass is finally cut free to remove.

 

[driller]

Here are several pics of the OEM sealant around the window opening.






The old glass set aside. We will be keeping it 'just in case'.


The new glass with tint applied getting prepped for installation.


Here the glass is attached to a fixture for alignment and test fitting.



Here is the new sealant being applied to the prepared surface.

 

[driller]

The finished product looks amazing!

 

[billcu]

Nice!
If it was me, I wouldn't have tinted it. My CE has old tint on it and it looks terrible. I'm afraid to remove it because that means the rear defroster won't work again. My 97 came with old tint too, luckily they didn't do the rear glass on that one.

 

[steve]

congrats, nice score and find, but maybe dump some of the junk in your trunk and you will get better MPG

 

[steve]

Nice!
If it was me, I wouldn't have tinted it. My CE has old tint on it and it looks terrible. I'm afraid to remove it because that means the rear defroster won't work again. My 97 came with old tint too, luckily they didn't do the rear glass on that one.

I think it may depend on the quality of the tint, and install quality as well. I forget what I used on my Corvette rear hatch glass, but it was pricey. It was not 3M, was supposed to be better than 3M at that time. Also my Corvette was parked in a garage so that helped.

 

[driller]

congrats, nice score and find, but maybe dump some of the junk in your trunk and you will get better MPG

The subwoofer takes up half the trunk making it appear to be more than it actually is.

 

[tixer]

I was thinking several of these photos were really just included to showcase the amp/capacitor setup..

Also, congratulations on finding a clearly top-notch glass guy, I hope they made a youtube/instagram video of this. It looks like a very difficult job.

 

[driller]

Also, congratulations on finding a clearly top-notch glass guy, I hope they made a youtube/instagram video of this. It looks like a very difficult job.

We actually had a discussion on the difficulty level of the job. He declined to say it was the difficult but ranked it as challenging. When I pressed him further, he said in his opinion it was not as difficult as tri-five Chevy windshields or old Freightliner tractor windshields. He did confirm if I wasn't interested in saving the glass, it would have been much easier.

 

[billcu]

We used the wire method to remove the rear glass from a parts car for my broken 97 glass. first we tried cutting it out with a sawsall but gave up on that. We didn't have a drill operated winch though, we just took turns pulling on the wire. Once we found a good place to start the wire (the bottom of the glass) it went pretty quick.

 

[beerdog]

That is awesome!