Replacing DeLorean door roof seals

 I've owned my DeLorean since 2011. Since I've owned my car, the door always made a kind of squeaking rubber sound when opening the doors all the way up. I posted a video about this back in 2013:

Since this wasn't a big problem, I moved onto other things and just lived with the noise the doors made when opening the last little bit. I recently decided to replace the door roof seals while I had the t-panel off while I bolted down the roof box.

It's a pretty straightforward job, but it does take some time and can be a bit frustrating. I chose to get my door roof seals from DMCH and chose to use rivets again instead of screws, like I've seen others do. Here's what it looked like before I dove in:

 

 

I first drilled the top of the rivets off using an 8mm drill bit. With the rivet heads off, I could then remove the seal. You do have to reuse the metal plate as only the rubber seals are replaced. You have to close the door and pull out the seals from the top of the car. My original seals were adhered to the metal plate using some kind of adhesive. The seals pulled off easily, but left behind a bunch of adhesive material. Here's the original seals after being removed from the car:

 This is the adhesive material left behind after pulling off the seal from the bracket:

I then set about to cleaning up the brackets and found that a sandblaster did an okay job, but left the plates with a dull finish. I was able to bring the bright finish back to them with a wire wheel though. 

After drilling off the rivet heads, I was left with the rest of the rivet still poking out. I made several attempts to remove them, but in the end, just pushed them into the metal so they're now hanging out inside the door, and called it good. I did not want to make the mistake of drilling too far and hitting the outside stainless skin of the door and having dents or pinholes. 

I then lined up the new door roof seal on top of the original to drill holes in the rubber in the right places. With the bracket cleaned up as best I could, I opted not to apply any sealant between the bracket and the seal. I then closed the DeLorean's door and lined up the holes for both the rubber and the bracket as best I could. After a few tries, I got them close enough to where I could get one rivet into all the right holes. Here is the door seal in the process of being riveted back in place:

Here's the driver's side door roof seal all done:

One thing I also did was try to protect the torsion bar during all of this. I had an old door seal lying around that I cut so that it would wrap around the torsion bar and protect it from any scratches or damage while I was in there with a drill and rivet tool. Others have used a garden hose cut length wise to do the same thing. Here's a new rivet getting read to go in on the passenger side, showing the black door seal protecting the torsion bar:

It's a bit of a tight fit to get the rivet tool in there, but I am pleased to report that I was successful in putting in all 16 rivets (8 for each door) and that the squeaking sound appears to be gone when I open the doors. The original seals were 40+ years old and were very stiff. The new ones are much more flexible and it may be the only time I will need to do this repair. I also did not damage any part of the door or torsion bar, so I'll call this job a success. Here is the passenger side all done too:

DeLorean roof box bolt down repair

 I have heard and seen some horror stories as it's related to some owners' experiences with a rusted and rotted roof box, as well as many that are experiencing separation between some of the pieces. 

Luckily, my roof box is still in decent shape, but I wanted to take some preventative action to keep it that way for as long as possible. A sign that there may be an issue developing is by looking at where the torsion bars are secured in place just above the rear window. As you can see from my car, the brackets and all of the metal are perfectly in line with no twisting from the torsion bars.

I bought a roof box repair kit from DeLoreanGo that included bolts to secure the roof box, washers, and replacement bolts for the torsion bar retaining plates, which I didn't use because I didn't remove the torsion bars for this fix. It also included a tube or sealant to ensure a water tight seal around the new bolts. This is the part of the roof box where you will drill through. The kit comes with detailed instructions and pictures that are easy to follow.

Since my roof box was still in excellent shape, I didn't need to go down the route of removing the torsion bars, which significantly simplified this job for me. I just removed the T-panel and opened the doors, and got to this point to expose the rear portion of the roof box:

After I wiped off the dirt of 40+ years, I laid down a strip of duct tape and marked four holes where I wanted to drill. They were off-center and more towards the rear of the roof box. I then followed the instructions by drilling progressively larger holes until I got to the desired diameter.

The instructions end up with the largest hole being 10mm, but since I only had drill bits that are imperial sizes, the last holes I drilled were 3/8", which was the closest size I had to 10mm. It was a tight fit and required that I thread in the bolts instead of just dropping or tapping them in, as shown below:

Drilling through the roof box will cause a bunch of debris inside the car, so I laid a blanket down on the rear parcel shelf to catch as much of it as possible before drilling the holes. After I put in all of the bolts, I tightened down the nuts on the inside.

There's a lot of extra threads showing after everything is tightened down. I then put a cutoff wheel on my grinder and cut the bolt so it's flush with the bottom of the nut, all while trying to contain the sparks as best as possible with cardboard and the blanket.

I then used the sealant and spread it generously on the top side of the bolts and washers. The kit comes with a full size tube of this stuff, but I only used a small percentage of it for this job. Overall, it wasn't at all difficult, but I took my time and tried to contain the mess as best I could, which slowed me down.

If I would have had to remove the torsion bars to relieve the tension on the roof box, it would have been a job that would have taken several more hours. All of those steps are included in the instructions, should you need to go down that route.