Boot & bonnet rubber

Home Depot or Lowes are fine for stick on foam rubber (closed cell if you can find it).  Some like to use just rubber spacer buttons on rear engine lid to let in a little more air (and water).  Believe DRCLOCK uses rubber from Grainger - search for past posts on topic.

Speedo - The attached pic is the type of rubber weather strip I used on the doors, engine lid and trunk lid. It is a peel & stick product found most any hardware, home improvement or auto parts store. Comes in various lengths.

Jim;

Do you have any problems with the adhesive not being "sticky" enough?  In the past doing home remodels, ie door jambs etc. I found the product to pull after a short period of time.  What type of material prep do you do?  Wipe and clean the surface?

Thnxs,

Art

The D rubber seal Musbjim shows, is the right type to use, you do need to be sure that the actual wall thickness is thin or it won't compress enough. The stuff JC whitney sells has a wall ticknes that's too heavy.

My VS doesn't have any kind of seal around the openings that the front deck lid hinges go through. I can look straight in and see the seat cushions.

I know that those hinges need to move through those slots freely, but I would like to cut down on that space around them by installing some kind of seal.

I am thinking that some kind of U shaped black rubber seal would do the trick. Any recommendations?

Doesn't kirk offer a carpet treatment which would help keep the wind from whipping through there?

Ted

Hey Art!

I used the displayed rubber seal to replace the seals that came on my VS. Those were typical flat weatherstrips used on household doorways. This works MUCH better.

Removed old rubber, cleaned the area with acetone, final clean with alcohol, then applied rubber d-strip. There is enough gap to not totally smash the strip (which would likely pull on strip when door/trunk is opened) but enough to let the weather strip do its job. Every so often I rub talcum powder on the rubber to further prevent sticking. So far, 10 years (and 70,000 miles) on this rubber seal with no problem. 

Looks like the answer to the deck lid bracket holes issue might be to put bumper bracket to body seals from a bug positioned and glued onto the hinges themselves so that when the deck lid is closed the seals come in contact with the cockpit wall and close it off.

Question becomes which bumper bracket to body seals will fit. 

BobG - Look at CMC's solution in the build manual.  It uses an in trunk piece of rubber that's has a slit.  I make aluminum oval with cut out piece to attach it.  Under dash where the hinges attach to cross beam there is a resin box that gets fiberglassed in. So double barriers against rain and cold (or heat).

On CMCs I think the hinge swing is too great for a bumper gasket.

The later ('68-'73?) bumper bracket to body seals are longer, and if they're not long enough you could take 2 sets and offset cut them to the proper length. Would it not be better to glue them to the wall?

ALB

Yeah, you might be right. It would be a cleaner installation. I was following a recommendation from an old thread. 

Thanks for the tip re: the 68-73 seals. I Looked at CiP1 and they have several different ones, cheap.

Thanks, Greg! I'll take a look. Sounds like a good fix. I don't quite understand why sealing these up isn't part of the original construction on VS. May not be a big deal in SoCal, but it would be beneficial to have this done on cars going anywhere else in the country.

Thanks for the tips guys!

Now you've got me wondering; in between periods of the Olympic hockey game (Canadian men play this morning and I'm home so it's not to be missed!!) I'm going to dig the junk off the front of the car and look.

ALB:

Do you, or anyone else know the dimensions of those 68 -73 Beetle bumper bracket seals? The openings I want to cover are: top to bottom 3 1/2" and side to side 7/8".

The bracket itself appears well centered in that 7/8" opening.

I might also get some sheet rubber and craft my own then silicone them to the fiberglass wall. Anybody know where I could get sheets of rubber or plastic in black that would work?