DeLorean replacing 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: