Hello, I have a 1990 Aerostar XL extended and the drivers side rear windows leak at the top. Any reason for this? Any way to fix this? I'm at my wits end. I got rid of my '88 XL Eddie Bauer because of this.


-Matt

 

It's probably the sealant around the glass geting old and breaking down. You can do a quick and dirty fix by thoroughly cleaning the outer frame with wax and silicone remover, and applying some clear RTV silicone rubber sealant around it. If that doesn't work, you will have to take the glass out and re-seal.

You need to work from the inside, and remove the interior side panel. This extends from behind the driver's seat all the way to the back, so you will have to clear everything out of the van to do this.

Once you have the panel off, you can more easily see where the leak is. At this point, you can choose to just apply sealant to the leaky spot on the inside, or you can do the more complete seal replacement. If you see rusty metal around the opening, you should take it all apart and clean that off, and do a complete job.

Removal of the side glass is kind of tricky. First, remove all the little sheet metal nuts that hold the glass in place. Leave a couple on loosely for the next step.

Then you need to apply force evenly across the whole glass and slowly push it out so that it separates from its old sealant. The original sealant is butyl rubber, and if the ambient temperature is high enough, it will be soft enough to do this. Otherwise, I would wait until the weather warms up. The the couple of nuts that you left on loosely will preent the glass from coming out too far too quickly. It will bend a little bit without breaking. But the other thing is you don't want it to all come out suddenly and hit the ground.

Once you get the old glass out, you need to clean off all the old sealant and replace with new. I got this package of butyl rubber rope from a local auto parts store and stuck it around the outside perimeter of the opening. Then I replaced the glass, pressing it in place against the new sealant, applying as even pressure as I could. Then I installed the nuts, but turning a couple of turns at a time, going around to all the nuts in sequence, until the glass sat flush against the body. Then test with a garden hose. It's been a year since I did mine, and everything is still water tight on that window.

 

^^^ exactly as typed above. but just keep in mind you need a pretty thick bead of butyl rubber sealant, or she will continue to leak. i had to remove the window 3 times - 1st to replace the window that was broken in, 2nd i didn't seal it up good, 3rd time is a charm. lol! the other thing is not to go crazy on the nuts when you tighten them back down. it will snap off the bolt. if you need to squeeze the frame back to the metal flange, i would suggest using some clamps and clamp the window frame down then tighten the nut snug.

 

wow - i didn't know it was such a complicated process. Okie-dikie thanks for the replys. Something to do on a day off *sigh*.

 

I did it in an afternoon, and that included removing the old silicone rubber sealant that the previous owner used (unsuccessfully) to seal the window.

The butyl rubber rope that I got was about 1/2" diameter, so it worked pretty well. Make sure all sealing surfaces are clean.

To tighten the nuts, I used a deep well socket and turned it by hand, a little at a time. You will be pulling on the glass against the butyl rubber rope, flattening it. Something you can do is turn each nut a little bit and go outside to look at the reflections of straight objects in the glass. The glass will actually warp and depress a little bit at those bolt locations if you tighten the nut too much. So if you're uncertain about tightness, turn it until you JUST start to see this, and then back off half a turn. Again, do this when it's warm out, so the butyl rubber will more easily compress.

 

ok - thanks for all the help. I really don't want to get rid of this van again just because of leaky windows.


-matt

 

I have done the same repair as Xlt4wd90 on both my vans. It works well. The key to remember is that the seal comes as one single bead of sealant. When you put that on the window, make sure the two ends meet at the bottom of the window, so that gravity won't allow water to come in even if that joint is not water tight.

 

thanks - this is one problem i wish these vans never had since i've only ran into this issue with one other van(but like anything i guess it comes with age).

-matt