Hey, gang. I replaced the door weatherstrip on my ‘63 Cutlass this morning. Pretty easy and straight forward. Used Steele Rubber weatherstrip.

The doors are now stupid hard to close. I certainly expected them to be more firm until the rubber conforms to the body when the door is closed, but this is hard enough to close that I thought I may have installed them wrong or something was caught in the hinge. It’s definitely on the front edge of the doors where the rubber needs to take the shape of the curves and fill the seam at the fender.

So... is this typical with Steele door weatherstripping? How long until the rubber conforms? Any way to improve this? The new door seals on my ‘78 Suburban made the doors firm to close, but nothing like this.

Thanks in advance. Happy the car will stay dry, but a little frustrated that the doors are so so hard to close. They were perfect before!

Ryan

 

I think this is normal, and the rubber will slowly break in and conform to the door. You could probably speed the process by parking the car in the hot sun with the doors closed.

 

Thanks, man. I gotta figure something out. The driver side especially is extremely tough to close.