Ford Window Trim Mod

 

Plastic, it is just a weak thing after so many years. It was probably a good idea initially when they designed these door panels for the ford trucks between 87 and 96 (and 97 f350). They are all generally the same, except the XL doesn’t have the bottom pocket on the door, or if it has Manual windows. Anyways, that isn’t what we are here to talk about.

I got some new Rattle, or wipers, or window trim, or whatever you want to call it. They are the rubber pieces for your side windows that keep water out and usually screw up your window if you roll it down after a car wash. These things are just rubber and eventually will crack. Your probably saying though, “Well, you just clip in the new ones, why do we have to suffer though this article!” Well, your correct, They DO just clip on. We all know plastic gets weak after a while, and we get problems like the following.

The bottom 2 are the same trim piece. I’ve already popped the felted rubber onto the door panels as you can see, but there is some plastic missing. The bottom left picture has a clip in it that is working properly. This is wonderful, but when I popped the next clip in to the left, it broke! What a pain! You can also see that the whole clip area is missing in the top picture. Oh my, what do we do? If you do not have these pieces secured to the door properly, they will move around, or be a pain to install on the door when you put the panel back in. I have a fix! I’ll give you a chance to guess what we are going to use before we get to involved. Okay, so Think about it…

I hope that wasn’t hard. I don’t know if I am the first person to come up with this idea or not, but if I am. I’ma do a little dance. *dance* Okay, we need a drill, some drills and some zip ties. (Snap ties for you crazy people).

This is pretty simple fix, I hope you see where I’m going with this.

First we are going to drill some holes in the area that we are missing a clip. Hold the trim in place with your left (or right) hand while you drill with the other. Drill though the trim into the plastic on the door. The trim has metal in it, so it will take a second. Make sure you hold it in place! Otherwise it will not be correct.

 

Now, just throw in a snap tie. This one is actually incorrect though. I had not done it for a while, and forgot which spot to put the zip toggle in. You want it to be flush, and to pull though, like the following example.

I hope you can see what is going on here. I threaded the zip tie though, and left some slack, then back though it came, and I pushed the toggle down on the other hole and pulled strait out. This is to try and keep the lowest profile I could with the tie. You might be thinking though, “Why don’t I just put it in the other way?” Well, because the lip you see pops over the metal on the door, and the big part of the tie will keep it from going into the door properly. So they have to be towards the window, not towards the door. I am making this sound confusing. Lets just go with an example and call it good.

There you have it.  I do 3 on each door. The trim will not “accidently” pop out while rolling the window up. Or powering it up, if you have auto windows. The one in the middle keeps it from moving around to much. If you clip them in, you will notice there is some slack there. This is a really easy fix, especially if you have new trim to put on like I did. My windows are so happy. Now I just have to change the scratched glass from the old dry rotted trim.