One of the great joys of hoarding collecting a wide variety of old cars is that you invariably learn their quirks, whether you want to or not. Early on, I realized that my luxurious and beautiful ’63 Riviera had more wind noise (with the windows up) than almost anything else I own. Because they helped me out so much when I bought the car, I joined the Riviera Owners Association, whose expertise pointed me directly to the culprit. Furthermore, since the ROA has a library of digital copies of their Riview club magazine, a kind member told me where to find a writeup explaining his experiences in repairing his car. Over the course of a couple days this month, I took the plunge and did a job that nobody wants to do, but sometimes you have to do.
The wind-noise problem on first-gen Rivieras often stems from deteriorated vent window gaskets, which on my car had clearly stayed long past closing time. Who knows why they crumble as they do; I have several old cars with original gaskets that are still in very good condition, and I tend to only replace rubber parts such as weatherstripping and suspension bushings if I absolutely must (new rubber parts just don’t seem to last like they used to). Clearly, this was a situation where I had to get out the wrenches.
It was not a job I approached with a “devil-may-care” attitude, as an ROA member on the AACA forums told me I might be opening up one of these (using this same image). It’s foreboding humor, for sure, but any time you tear into an old car, you should always be prepared to find something absurd.
The door of an early Riviera looks like any other car door, except for the fact that it’s much more attractive than most of them (I’m sorry to editorialize, but the ’63 Riviera is one of my lifetime favorite cars – I love it). It is not, however, assembled like most doors.
The outer skin is not welded to the inner door, but rather it is held together with a system of studs and acorn nuts (which someone had replaced with open nuts on the lower portion of mine, and they were a pain to remove due to dirt and rust).
Fisher Body did an excellent job of designing the door skin to be easily removable, except for one thing: the driver’s side mirror. Once removed, the door skin is still attached via the three remote control cables. I carefully (carefully!) removed them from the “joystick” itself with a pair of needle nose pliers and marked the cables themselves. It’s one of those things that’s hard to explain, but it becomes clearer once you study it for a couple minutes. It’s nice to not be on the clock when I’m working on my cars, because I spend a not-insignificant amount of time staring at things.
Once the skin is removed, this is what you see, and you can see that none of the window mechanisms are accessible from the interior side of the door, as they are in most cars.
To remove the vent window frame, there are only two bolts and two nuts; the bolts secure the vent to the inner door, while the nuts provide some adjustment for the front window track and the vent frame itself. Once again, a little time spent staring at it makes everything a little better.
Once it’s out, this is what you’ll be looking at on your dirty garage floor.
One bolt holds the vent glass into the opening mechanism, and then you gently pry it down to release the upper stud before pulling the whole thing out of the frame. The vent is operated with a crank on my lightly-optioned Riviera, but some cars have a power vent window, and the gear on those is often worn, based on what I’ve gleaned in my time spent on the AACA forums: just something to think about should you find yourself with a Riviera of your own someday.
From that point, it’s mostly grunt work: cleaning and scraping out old weatherstripping and adhesive, followed by the equally tedious process of using new weatherstrip adhesive and waiting ten long minutes for everything to tack up before you can install the seals. As a side note, weatherstrip adhesive is rivaled only by anti-seize for its habit of finding its way onto everything in its path and never coming off. It does its job reasonably well, but I imagine that wrangling poisonous snakes is an apt metaphor. I just hate using that stuff.
The seal at the rear of the glass (opposite the front door glass channel run, which I also replaced) is held on by these tabs, but I also used weatherstrip adhesive because no new part is exactly like an old factory part. More on that seal in a minute.
When you’re all done, this is what you have. There’s also a screw-on rubber tab at the top of the frame (at the top of the “V”) whose screw also holds the two pieces of the frame together. Mine are in rough shape, but the new ones seem to keep the window from closing all the way. It’s a problem I’ll worry about later on. Or never.
Since the door skin is off, it’s also an excellent time to clean up the window tracks and power window gears and give them a new layer of grease with which they can collect dirt. On the passenger door, I used marine grease, but it smells really bad, especially on these 168-degree days we’ve been having this summer; therefore, I used synthetic “Super Lube” from a spray can on the driver’s door. It smells better, but it was a little runnier than I’d like (by design – the solvent is supposed to evaporate and leave a thin layer of grease behind).
In this picture, with the window closed, you can see why Fisher Body built the car this way. Since Rivieras had frameless door glass, it gave them an easy method to align everything so the doors would seal (more or less – I don’t think hardtops were ever strictly weather-tight).
It’s also a good time to replace the gaskets on the door locks and door handles. I forgot to buy a mirror gasket, so that one will just have to stick around until next time.
I do not want to present the idea that everything went perfectly well; it rarely does. Expensive builds on TV give people the impression that building a car with perfect door and fender gaps is nothing that a little time and money can’t handle, and maybe they’re right. But what I know from my experiences is that unless you are ready to repaint a car and spend several years and most of your savings on it, you just have to make some compromises. I used a carbide bit on my Dremel to open up some attachment holes on the front of the door skin so I could move it back a fraction of an inch, as the front of the door is awfully close to the fender. You can adjust the door itself, but then you need to adjust the side windows, and they are currently perfect; additionally, the gaps are not uniform top to bottom, so moving the door backward will most likely open up the can of worms my fellow ROA club member so fittingly brought up. I am perhaps a “six” on a one-to-ten scale of perfectionism. Close enough.
Also, my well-documented car apparently came off the line on December 26, 1962. Whether that was a bit of a post-holiday off day for Flint Assembly or something else, I don’t know, but the driver’s vent window has always required a little help with my left hand to get it closed. It’s not in the mechanism; it’s in the vent glass to frame relationship (I checked – I had the door and the vent frame on-and-off at least three times). Now, with a thick new gasket, it needs more than a hand (more like two hands and fourteen curse words). Short of finding a new frame (and ordering another set of very expensive seals), I’m just going to live with it. Cars, like people, are rarely perfect, and like I mentioned at the top, they all have their quirks.
Besides, I hardly open the vent windows anyway. And at least when that cool weather comes creeping in, as it inevitably does, the wind noise will not.
P.S. I’ll take another opportunity to say that if you own a Riviera of any generation, the Riviera Owners Association is worth a look. I’m not a club guy in any way, but ROA members have helped me with parts (which are often a little tough to find) and advice (which, as a stubborn man, I usually don’t ask for), and the bimonthly club magazine has a really good classified section for cars, parts, and services.
Unbolting the door skins for access wow, that helps, my old car beeds baily channels anf outer window seals they arent gunna get done because I did those on the other Hillman and it was difficult in the extreme,
the doors are fine let one go and it will swing shut and latch correctly like it just left the factory, gaps are good all round, its never had a serious hit.
This two piece door is fantastic ! .
Ask any Mechanic about internal door work and they’ll blanch .
You neglected to mention if all or most of the wind noise is gone…….
-Nate
Ha…I did. I haven’t driven it with the windows up yet since I finished both doors, but I did roll them up on the expressway after finishing the passenger door, and there was no noise coming from that side at all.
Thanks for bringing us along for the adventure, Aaron! I once replaced the vent window seals in my 1960 VW bus and it was similar fun and challenges.
You’re welcome! Ugh, I have another set to do, but the car won’t show up on here until Sunday morning. That’s a job that will wait until next summer.
Old cars can be notoriously bad on wind noise. My two 1st gen. Mercury Comets had terrible wind noise. I don’t know if it was the vent rubber or something else. To my happy surprise, my three present cars (’58 Ford, ’59 Chevy, ’60 Dodge) have very little wind noise at all.
Here’s the vent rubber on my ’59 Chev. It has some cracks and dry rot, but still seals well and doesn’t produce wind noise. Needless to say, I’m leaving it alone!
I agree, don’t touch them if they aren’t leaking! The stuff GM put in there is significantly better than anything being made today. Strangely, my ’65 Skylark doesn’t leak from its vent windows, even though they don’t look great.
Our brand new, made-in-Japan 1993 Corolla had a lot of wind noise from the front driver’s door/window. I mentioned it to a friend who was a very good body and fender guy. We went to the garage, he opened up the driver’s door, stepped into the opening facing out and raised his right foot off the ground. He put his knee at the base of the window frame at the back where it merged with the door panel. He then put both hands on the top rear corner of the window frame and yanked hard three times. I had visions of cracked welds, buckled sheet metal or broken glass. None of that happened and it was definitely quieter.
If there is one area where you can positively identify a cheap, quickie restoration it is the front vent window assemblies. Even before chrome plating got ungodly expensive, cars with great chrome would have less-great chrome on vent window frames, not to mention the old, cracked rubber. You have now demonstrated why this is, and confirmed my suspicions (because I was never, ever tempted to mess with old vent windows).
And wow, let me join the chorus of people who never had any idea there was a car with a removable door skin. What a fabulous idea to anyone who ever sliced the crap out of his hands trying to work on stuff with about 50% of the access you really need.
Once again, you are my hero for tackling this job and showing us how it is done!
It really is a well-thought-out idea! I’m not positive, but I think they went to a traditional door on the second-generation Riviera. Working inside a traditional door is about as much fun as working under a dashboard.
Vent windows, gotta love them. Same goes for the door windows if a hardtop vs a sedan. My truck and Ambassador have vents while the door window is framed so no alignment issues. The other four have vents also but are coupes (like yours) and hardtops. Of the four the four door hardtops don’t exactly have the back window aligned with the C pillar and have always been that way. Don’t fool with that as it would no doubt mess up the alignment with the back of the front window. Definitely a can of worms. In that way a four door sedan is better. Yet in the end wind noise isn’t an issue since I always drive with the driver’s window open.
Oh, I’d have the windows open all the time if I could, but I drive these things until the salt hits, so on a 35-degree day in early April or early November, the windows are up and the heater is on.
What is 35 degrees?
“What is 35 degrees?”
It’s a really warm day in January in Wisconsin.
BTW, I have NEVER seen a door come apart like that!
This past winter, “35 degrees” was a warm reading in a lot a places.
I read this and I thought, this is how my audio hobby is like others’ automotive hobbies. The tonearms on Dual 1219, 1229, 1229Q, and 1249 turntables all turn into nightmares as the turntables have aged. These were all top-of-the-line units, and performed magnificently when they were new. The tonearms on each have an ingenious switch assembly that raises the tonearm to line up with the middle of the stack when playing a stack of records. The switch lowers the tonearm to be parallel with the record on the platter in single-play mode. Unfortunately, part of that mechanism has become unobtanium, and if it breaks because the switch mechanism binds up, the turntable becomes a paperweight. I have one. I’m looking at ways to permanently lock the tonearm into single-play mode, but I don’t look forward at all to removing the tonearm to accomplish that. I guess the German engineers had no idea that they were making things of such good quality that people would want to use them fifty years later.
Fascinating. Who knew that outer skins were removable? Makes perfect sense once you’ve explained it.
I think the “quirks” are what makes owning and driving an older car that much more fun. I’ll take a few “quirks” over today’s outlandish car payments any day.
Nice Riviera and a great job on the vent window. I’ve got four window motors that don’t operate the windows on my ’93 Grand Marquis. The motors are fine, it’s the nylon gears that are shot. And, it’s looking like my interior projects will take place next year. At least my windows are all in the right position.
Thank you! I just did a little poking around, and it seems like broken nylon gears are a fairly common and not-too-hard-to fix issue with Panther-based cars. Good luck!
I have mixed feelings about vent windows. The last family car we had that was so equipped was a 1965 Chevrolet BelAir. I can still remember my dad flicking his ashes out the vent window, but those memories are pretty vague.
The next car was a stripped 1970 Strato Chief. It did not have vent windows and I recall my dad regularly lamented their loss. For a six year old kid, no vent windows meant even more secondhand smoke for us in the back seat. That was because we were not allowed to roll the windows down. This would mess mother’s hair, so we gasped and boiled.
I had wind noise on my 83 Silverado. Let’s just say that the information on how to replace the vent window seals was a LOT glowing and rosier that the actuality!! I had to enlist the assistance of TWO professionals to get the mess back together, and they still whistle. Needless to say, I decided not to fool with the passenger side!
Very interesting article, Aaron. I spent 41 years in the collision repair business and never knew the early Riviera had bolt on door skins. Of course, I started my journey twenty years after your car was new. I admire and understand your sense of adventure, as I am very similar. That is a project I would dive into.
GM had another relationship with that style of door, but with the plastic bodied space frame cars. Mainly Saturn, but also Fiero and the dust buster vans. I am all too familiar with those.
Thanks and a belated welcome back!
Thanks! It’s good to be here!
Terrific article, Aaron.
I wonder if the bolt-on skin may have also arisen from an early idea to have no vent window at all? (How good would THAT look on the already ridiculously gorgeous Riv!) I say that because it appears that there’s actually enough room for a full window to go down, with some mods to the motor (and perhaps even a slight trim-coverable bugle into the inside door panel).
Love the observation about time taken staring at things, it’s so very true, and so very needed. These days, assisted by a camera in a phone, though I’ve learnt not to rely only on that (the photo always but always misses something). Lucky I’m not a surgeon, I guess….
One question for you: from the pictures, the door skin is conventionally wrapped around the inner on the edges, so how does it come off once unbolted without “unfolding” that wrapping?
Thank you! The door skin isn’t wrapped around the inner frame (speaking of pictures being misleading!); the “step” you see is the inner door frame lying atop the outer skin. The skin itself pulls straight off once the nuts are removed (aside from the aforementioned mirror).