After hearing all the good ratings from others on the forum who had installed them, I bought a set of Altman bear claw latches through Russ. The latches on my '52 GMC 150 were completely worn out and would maybe latch after a few brisk slams. Russ said "Shouldn't take long, about 2 hours per door the first time". It took me and my friend David (retired paint & body guy) almost 2 months!! Probably averaged 2-3 hours a day on the 3-4 days a week we worked on it. As usual, this project ended up encompassing a lot more than was originally planned. We decided that as long as we were going to put on the new latches we should put new weather stripping on the doors. It looked like it would be very hard to attach new door weather strip to the front side of the doors while the doors were attached to the truck. It was time to pull the doors. David said "as long as we are at it, let's strip the hardware out and 'service' (one of his favorite words) the doors. So out came the inner and outer door moldings, side glass, vent window assemblies, interior and exterior latch parts along with the old latches (these had to be removed for the latch kit anyway), window regulators and the door glass channel guides. We had started down the rat hole. The vent windows were very delaminated (bubbled). When I bought my truck, the previous owner included a brand new set of chrome-framed repop vent windows. I didn't think the chrome mixed well with my farm truck, so I had never installed them. David said "No problem. We'll just 'scrub' (another of his favorite words - in this case wet sand the chrome with 400 grit) the frames and shoot a lick of black on them." Once the doors were off I took a good look at the hinges. The driver's side hinges were fairly tight (someone must have already replaced/repaired them), but the passenger side hinges flopped like fish out of water. Decided to put in oversize hinge pins on the passenger's side while just servicing (there's that word again) the driver's side. Servicing in this case involved removing, disassembling, media blasting, painting, greasing and reassembling the hinges. The passenger side hinges got the same treatment plus some. The first trick was removing the upper hinge. Instead of the usual four fine thread bolts that are supposed to attach the hinge to captive nuts in the cab, I found the nice round heads of three galvanized 3/8" carriage bolts! The only way to get to the nuts on the back side of the hinge pocket was to remove the 'fresh air' cover on the passenger's side kick panel. Four of the six attaching screws came out easy. Removing the fifth screw required removing the glove box. The problem with removing the last screw is that my truck has a Vintage Air A/C system that would have to be removed to get to that screw. I pivoted the cover on the remaining screw and found there was just enough room to get my hand into the hole and to the back side of the hinge mounting area. Once there I found one nut I could remove by hand and the other two took very little effort to loosen then. Now that the passenger side hinge was out we could take a better look at the hinge pocket in the door pillar. All four of the captive nuts were missing and someone had cut across the pocket with a saw between the center and the top bolt area and bent back the area that the center bolt attached to. Add some bending, welding, metal prep, painting and making new nut plates for attaching the hinge bolts to the list of things to do. I also spent about an hour pulling trash (mostly rust, but did find the remains of all four captive nuts) out of the bottom of this cavity with a magnet. My truck leaked water around the bottom center of the windshield during rain or washing. I noticed that the bottom screw (inside the cab) was missing that holds the outside windshield center molding in place. No matter what I did, I couldn't get a replacement screw to grab through the windshield into the molding. Finally took the molding off and found that the bottom threaded area had totally rusted away inside the molding. A new repop from our host solved the problem. The lower cab windlace rubber (cab floor to door) had been installed backwards and was not sealing up the gap between cab and door. I installed new ones from Classic Parts the right way. The door glass channel guide on the driver's door was missing the bracket on the bottom that has 2 screw holes that attach it to the door. Bent up some sheet metal to match the bracket on the other side, welded it onto the guide, striped out the old glass channels, media blasted and painted the guides and drilled two new holes in the new bracket. Took a look at the side window glass now that it was out and decided to replace it as the laminate plastic sheeting between the two pieces of glass was starting to discolor. Ordered new glass from our host. Following is e-mail exchange between me and Classic Parts: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Hanlon Sent: Friday, May 16, 2014 8:06 AM To: customerservice@classicparts.com Subject: window glass I recently purchased two of your part number 70-711 clear window glass for my 52 GMC. I am very disappointed in the product I received. The edges were not cut in a straight line. The edge of one side of a laminated piece was not necessarily parallel to the other side. The edges were ragged enough to cut you if you ran your hand over them. Had I installed them, they would have quickly worn the new window channels I just installed. I would have returned them, but I doubt any replacement from you would be any better. So I spent another $38 a piece at a local glass shop getting the edges smoothed and then polished so I could finish the reconstruction of the doors on my ?52 GMC. I really think you should have proper finishing done, even if you need to charge more for the end product. Now on the up side, all the rest of the stuff I have bought from you over the last few months has worked well. From: Customer Service [mailto:customerservice@classicparts.com] Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 10:24 AM To: Bill Hanlon Subject: Re: window glass I have spoken to my manager, and she said that because all of the glass is hand cut, there will be some jagged edges that may have to smooth out. She said that we can give you a $30.00 credit on your account. Thanks Mindy -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My text is too long. 10,000 characters max. I'll break it off here and continue in the next post
Part 2 Continuation of post above It took the local glass shop a week to finish the edges of the windows. 'Serviced' the inner and outer window moldings (media blasted, straighten a few holes that had screws clinched too tight, a lick of bondo in a few places where the outer molding had rusted badly where you couldn't see, sanding, priming and painting and they look like new. Cleaned out the insides of the doors to the best of my ability. Shot something similar to POR-15 into the door interiors. Spent two days prepping the interior surface and jamb areas of the doors. Welded on a missing captive nut to one door's lower hinge cover area. Primed and painted the jams, the interior door surface and the exterior surface above the belt line. Forgot to say it took the paint shop a week to mix up the small amount of paint we ordered. Got distracted and saw that the hood to cowl seal was busted. Ordered a new one and new hood bumpers as long as I was on that page in the catalog. GM probably expected someone who was replacing the seal to remove the hood because the second hold down screw from the outside on each side was a *&^% to get to. I finally remembered a ratcheting screwdriver in the bottom of my tool kit that is only about 3/4" high that would just barely get that screw out and back in if David would pull sideways on the hood to give me a little space to work in. While distracted I noticed that the sponge seal where the steering column passes through the cab floor was non-existent and the steering column flange that holds the seal in place was really beat up. Ordered new pieces from our host and went to put them on. Had to remove the steering wheel, turn signals and steering column hanger from the bottom of the dash so I could slide the old flange off and replace it with the new one. But there wasn't enough room to slide the flange past the bottom of the dash. Had to remove three and loosen the fourth bolt that holds the steering box to the frame so I could tilt the column away from the dash to replace the parts. Meanwhile, back at the doors ..... Installed the new latches in the doors and the new latch plates in the door jambs. Probably took 5 hours total. One more than Russ estimated. I'm old and slow. Installed new division bar and door glass channels. Put new door rubber seals onto the door with DuPont contact cement. David insisted on using this instead of 3M weatherstrip glue. He's the expert, so I just followed along. Then came the part that really hurt my feelings. Even though I showed him videos of how the door weatherstrip was supposed to be installed (along with many references in this forum about proper direction of installation) he again insisted on installing the door weatherstrip with the smaller hump towards the edge of the door and the taller hump towards the center of the door. When he finally offered to buy a new set of gaskets if I didn't like the outcome, I relented and let him do it his (wrong) way. Put Dynamat inside both doors. Bought a keyed push button for the driver's side door handle. Disassembled, 'serviced' (cleaned and lubed) both external handles and set aside for re-installation. I now have one GM key that works (new driver's side lock) and two more locks (glove box and passenger's door) that I have no key for. I'll make a trip to the locksmith soon. 'Serviced' (cleaned, painted, lubed and replaced the rollers) on the window regulators. Replaced the driver's side inside door latch control which was wobbly and had a broken spring. Replaced the cardboard door panels and added stainless door panel metal frames from our host. Thanks for the donation Bilbo. Problem is that the cardboard should have been about 1/8" larger in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions to properly fill the metal frames. Went to install the new gasket in the vent window frame at the trailing edge of the vent glass. I don't know what was supposed to hold these on place, but I found that a small brass brad from Office Depot did a nice job (need 6 for each side - brads come in a box of 100). Installed new window stop bumpers in each door. Installed new door bumpers in each jamb. Installed new door hinge springs into each hinge during hinge rebuild. Each top hinge uses two springs that are mirror images of each other. This dumba$$ didn't realize that the springs were different and ended up spending 30 minutes trying to get two of the same springs into the same hinge. Can't be done. Once I figured that out it only took another 15 minutes to assemble the hinges. And then there is the cab windlace. The old windlace was in three pieces on each side and leaked like a sieve. There are not enough curse words in all the languages on this planet to install the windlace around the doors. I read and re-read everything on this forum about installation of the windlace, and still spent three days doing the job. Tried many lubricants and baby oil worked best for me. Even though I had 'opened up' many crimped spots in the channels, there were still many places I could not get the windlace to slide past. I eventually ended up opening the channel wider than stock in many places with a pair of duck-bill pliers, inserting the windlace and then tapping the channel back closed using a mallet and a wooden dowel striking the outside surface of the windlace. I found that 'glass knives' (basically a hard plastic stick about 3/4" wide, 1/8" thick and 8" long with tapered edges) was the best tool to use to manipulate the windlace into the channel. Terrible cramps in my hands all night after working for many hours on this &^%#^%$*&^. I finally got to the point of needing to install about 6" of windlace into the upper rear corner area on each door opening. I used a pair of vice grips on each side to hold the windlace in place over night so it would take a 'set' in the position I wanted it. Came in the next day and managed to get each corner in place in about 15 minutes. As an afterthought, I think the easy way would be to open the channel to about twice its normal size (with duck billed pliers, etc.), put a few inches of windlace in place (may 6-8 inches) and close up the channel with a mallet and dowel as described above. The driver's side outside door open button (new repop from our host) would not press the release lever on the new latch assembly down far enough to open the door. Remove the button and added about 1/4" of metal (welding rod) to the interior end of the button. Put everything back together and it all works GREAT! Took the truck out onto the freeway and wound it up to 65 with the windows and vents closed. No wind whistles! Turned on the A/C and found that it cooled nicely when there wasn't a Nor'easter blowing through the cab. The doors open with a nice 'pop' and close with a nice 'thunk'. Took Ken out for a burger at lunch today and even he was impressed with the way the doors close. So, from 20 feet away you can't tell I did any work at all on my GMC, but getting in, driving down the road and exiting are now much more enjoyable than before. I guess I'll quit bitching.
That is what I call chasing the rusty pipe from the house to the meter at the street. Just think if you had started something that was only going to take 10 minutes, . But am glad you got through it and still have your truck.
Great efford done I`d read your long story Bill and i am glad everything worked out well for you except fromt the window glas failure. But you got 30 bucks refunded wich was`nt that bad. The most important thing is the trip that you made afterwords and the feeling of satisfaction you had . Thanks for telling the details , Nice for old School People like me to understand. Martinius.
Glad to see you've fixed some issues with your truck, Bill. those door latches do make a big difference don't they? I owe you some reciprocal time working on your truck, still. Call me next time you're going to work on it and I'll come help. Gonna have a space at the Conroe swap meet June 6-8th. Come up if you have a chance, and bring Ken.
I'm not very good at listening to long stories. So, did you catch the rat or not? I thought this stuff only happened to me.
Good Job Bill! Has to feel good knowing that even though it took more than the "4 hours" you expected, you cleared up a bunch of other issues. I do have a couple of questions for you and anyone else that wants to chime in.... 1. Since the host sells "hand cut" glass, is there perhaps a better place to get glass from? I am going to be putting the smoked glass in, but would expect that when it arrives at the door, it should be ready to install... at least that is how it should be. 2. I have read several build threads where people have installed dynomat in their doors, as you have. Is that to keep them from sounding like a tin can? How much did it actually help? Also, did you use the peel and stick stuff? I assume you placed it on the backside of the outer door skin? Sorry for all of the questions. Just want to know before I get to that point... Thanks, and again, good job!
Don't know about other suppliers. My experience with a few of them is that when you call with a detailed "pre-purchase" question you usually don't get much of an answer that isn't already in the catalog or web site that you've already seen. Yes, I put the peel & stick Dynamat on the inside of the outer door skins. Primary purpose was to reduce the "tin" sound of the doors closing. I used two pieces. One piece 18" tall and 12" wide run vertically near the non-hinge side of the door, starting about 8-10" below the window opening. The other piece is about 8" tall and maybe 16" wide and runs horizontal from under the vent window parallel with the window opening.
hmmm. i bought glass from our host and was very happy with it. and im in the glass biz. no jagged edges on mine
My glass has always been decent, but windsheilds are frequently too long in the corners. You should have gotten a quarter window rivet kit to attach the rear rubber to the frame. It also has the pivot rivet included. Dynamat or Hushmat (my preference) works WONDERS for these trucks. You tap on my roof and get a solid thunk, not a ringing reverb. I used a complete bulk kit of Hushmat in my cab. You don't have to cove everything, a little per panel will work wonders, but more the merrier. Glad the latches worked.....I sell quite a few. Best upgrade around on these trucks.
We have a great glass guy that does show quality edges but that still leaves that plastic in the middle which WILL go bad eventually. For that reason we have many of ours done in tempered glass. Usually only adds a day to turn around time and about ten bucks a window. Since you're experienced now and a man of great leisure we have a 57 that needs the exact same thing. Pays $40hr but of course at two bits a cuss word you might have to pay me.
Best Upgrade I have been wanting to do the latch upgrade for a while. Think I'll put it off for a bit. Andy
Don't put it off, Andy. Bill Hanlon and I did mine in a day and they really work well. Gives me a better sense of security knowing the doors won't pop open when I hit a bump.
Good Works ! Thanx for the detailed writeup Bill ; I guess now I know why my brother rolls his eyes every time I say " I'll just take it apart , 'service it' and re install "........ . To me , that's just part and parcel of the job . Isn't it fun working on 50 + year old vehicles ? . As you mentioned , the satisfaction of doing it your owndamnself cannot be beat .
