Windshield Seal Inspection

On the return trip from Tulsa, we encountered a heavy storm and water was leaking into the car.  It was leaking an incredible amount from under the dash but I could also see it coming in from the top of the windshield.  My immediate concern was that there rust holes all under the trim so I purchased a little trim removal tool from Summit and decided to take all the trim off this evening. 

With all of the trim removed, it is apparent all the original sealant is dried out, cracked, and falling out.  I can take a small flat head screw driver and easily find places I can slide it right past the sealant and the rubber seal.  I imagine the rain just went through these same areas when driving down the road at 70.   

Most of the sealant along the bottom of the window had long since cracked and fallen out or was just trapped behind the trim.  The good news is that at this point I don't really see any rust.  Of course, I could still remove the window and find a ton of problems. 

I'm not sure if I can attempt to remove, reseal, and reinstall the window by myself or not.  I cleaned up all the cracked and broken sealant, cleaned the trim with some 0000 steel wool, and put everything back together for now.  I'll have to think on this a bit and see if I want to do the work myself. 

I'll definitely need to replace the windshield trim clips if I do the job as a few are missing or bent.  I added a Scott Drake C5ZZ-65423A26-B to my Summit order and it is an exact replacement so I'll need a few more of these.  I believe there are about 20 but I don't recall exactly. 

If I chose to do this work myself, I'll reference the following YouTube video from Mustangs to Fear as it has good detail on the process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr7Prioj9Xo&list=LLlIn764U3jAxR_rROoPoIWQ&index=13&t=0s

New Radiator Overflow Tank

Once I upgraded to a larger radiator before the Tulsa trip, the old plastic overflow tank I was using no longer fit in the original location.  Very little actually fits beside the radiator so I decided to get a nice stainless steel version and make a custom bracket to hold it.  This week I started that process by ordering a Spectre 2" X 13" overflow tank (Part # 4179).  

The tank arrived this past Thursday and I started work on installing it yesterday morning.  I used a piece of 1 1/4" x 1 1/4" x 1/16" aluminum angle to form the bracket.  I cut down one side so that it would fit the mounting area along the side of the radiator shroud perfectly.  I then worked on the other side to make two tabs which matches the tabs on the overflow tank.  With those things done, I drilled a few holes to mount everything up.

I painted it with the Krylon 1613 paint that I used on most of the under hood parts.  I then installed everything using some stainless steel bolts I picked up at Lowe's.  Its a much better option than the old plastic container which I zip tied to the fender apron in order to make the trip to Tulsa.  With the new container in place, I removed the plastic one and was able to reinstall the windshield washer tank.

The final product looks good.  Just about every overflow tank seems to have a 1/4" inlet which does not match my 3/8" radiator nipple.  I'm going to run a 3/8" to 1/4" adapter so that I will not have any leaks trying to use a clamp to get 3/8" hose to secure on a 1/4" inlet.