Door weather stripping contact area......is it enough???

[DAVEN1256]

I am hoping my doors are going to be water tight.

The body is close to the end of the building stage getting close to paint. All the panel alignment on the sides of the car has been done. My car has new quarters, new door skins on my original shells, and new fenders. I decided to test fit my new weather stripping (Metro Super Soft) on the doors. I hope I don't regret not doing this earlier.

After putting in the weatherstrip, I wanted to make sure I was getting a good seal on all three sides of the doors. I took a three inch wide piece of paper and kept closing it in the door and pulling on it to see how much resistance was there. I started at the top of the front of the door and kept moving it around the door until I got to the top of the back of the door.

The results were......on the front and bottom of both doors, the seal is very tight with a lot of resistance when I pull on the paper. The back of both doors is a different story. There is resistance, but much less than on the front and bottom. I wet the surface on the quarter panel where the back of the door weatherstrip contacts it. I closed and opened the door and looked to see how much of the weatherstrip was wet..........There is only 1/8 of an inch of contact area.

So my question is...is this enough? We can't move the doors back any further to increase the contact area.

Thanks......Dave

[DAVEN1256]

I was hoping someone would chime in on this.

Looking back at reference pictures I took as my car was coming apart, it looks like the original weather stripping on the back edge of the door (where it contacts the quarter panel) had about a 1/4 inch contact area.

The 1/8 inch contact area I have now doesn't seem like much, especially if the seal loses it's "spring" over time.

After all the time and money spent on this project, I can't have a car the can't keep water out. If  need to do something about this, I need to do it before the car is painted and past the point of no return.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.........Dave