There are a couple of cracks in the paint on the roof of my new 500, and I thought I'd try touching them up a bit to keep the water and steel apart. A drop of thinners mixed with two of paint applied with a very fine brush and the crack wicks up the paint. It went quite well. A bit of fine sandpaper and polish and they should all but disappear. As they are very close to the sunroof, I thought I'd take it off so it doesn't get dirty. Oh. There's a massive crack with the paint peeling off hidden by the fabric roof 30mm by 20mm.
Ok, so chip out the old paint, fill, sand prime and paint. So far so good. Its the same paint I'd tried on the grille and it blended in nicely. But not on the roof. The new paint and the old are not mixing and no amount of polishing up is hiding the join. So what started as a small touch up job is going to end up as a full roof respray. Do you have any tips for getting out the windscreen and putting it back in again?
Original paint may be cellulose, but could have been resprayed with Acrylic, two pack/ waterbased etc. So it may be best to get a sprayer to check and advise, often a good paintshop can mix up half a litre of the correct type to get you out of trouble.
Generally removing windscreens on older vehicles involves carefully pulling the filler strip out of the retaining rubber (don't stretch or damage it if you are going to reuse it. Usually the join is at the bottom of windscreen sometimes under a plastic trim. Next run a tool around the rubber to free it off from the glass. If you are lucky this will loosen it so that gentle, even pressure from the inside along with washing up liquid and a lot of patience can start to free it off to come outwards, but just do a little at a time as it is very easy to break the glass !!!
Refitting again starts with the glass in the rubber offered up to the car with lots of lube and patience along with easing the progress gently with a tool.
What we used to do is pull apart an old fan V belt for the strong string inside it, as it is long enough to go right around the rubber in the groove that the rubber sits in the metal frame of car, then with gentle pressure pushing the glass towards the car as someone is pulling the string to fold the lip of the rubber to sit in the frame as you work you way around. Finally the plastic moulding strip is worked back into the groove to tighten/secure the windscreen rubber to hold the glass in the frame, there used to be a diamond shaped tool that you used to feed the moulding strip into the windscreen rubber.
You may need to run a sealant gun around the rubber to metal to stop water ingress.
When at college we went to the factory and they used to just bang them in using a rubber mallet! I suppose after the first 1000 it gets easy.
We used to do loads as an apprentice and I have done a Mk1 Transit one on my own, but it does take a lot of care, so unless you have a spare screen and feel confident it may be worth bunging a local windscreen specialist to do the job as old glass is quite fragile.
