'59 Plymouth Forum

I am pulling the body off my 59 for blasting and painting and noticed the painted outer trim around the rear window of my 2 door sedan is held on with several screws and appears to be two pieces. One for the post and another that runs along the top of the rear window opening. It is also molded to the body with putty or weld along the roof line. Does anyone know if these two pieces come off? If it is putty they will probably come off when blasted.

I wish I could answer your question. I think you may be the only one on this list working with a 2 dr sedan.
John Fowlie @ Big M probably has one or more of these...
My 59 Parts Book is packed away somewhere; the book may have an exploded view of that window.
I would guess that because its a non-opening window, it would be set in a rubber gasket, therefore no need to putty or weld any metal trim over it. I would look for nuts, bolts, clips and/or screws. Of course a previous owner may have altered things.

My two door sedan has the trim you mention that surrounds the rear "side window" however it was not removed when my car was painted years ago. It does appear to have putty or a weld where it meets the body and does have a scew at the top in the door jamb area. I guess you will know once the car is blasted.

Ricky Big M or John Q. what holds this side window trim on?

Roger - side windows go up and down - only the small quarter window is fixed on Sedans.

Curt

I do not know, I have never pulled glass from a 59 sedan.

The trim is on the outside, and doesn't contact the glass. It has about 8 screws on the top piece and 4 on the post, and I couldn't find it in my parts book. Next week I am getting the body blasted so that should tell the story.

It must be "filler", but which kind ... Lead? Screwheads are un-painted, adding to the mystery. Tell us what you discover.

The screw heads were painted and what you see in the poor quality photo are the screw holes after I removed them. The screws all along the inner upper piece were under the headliner and rear window gasket and part of the bare metal. The inner half of these trim pieces is loose when the screws are removed like a regular trim piece, but whatever the putty is, it is holding it firm. The reason I need to remove it (if possible) is to get at some rot where the upper trim meets the rear window opening.
I am scheduled for blasting on 12/27 and am sure there will be many surprises.

I still haven't gotten my body over to the blasters. When I was trying to load the body with my Eastwood body cart on the trailer the cheap castors weren't up to the task. I had to modify my body cart by welding on some bigger mounting plates with really heavy duty castors, so now it should be ready to go. I did take the fenders, hood, and trunk over for blasting and didn't get any big surprises except some shoddy previous rust repair along the lower trunk lip. Looks like I will have some more work to do with my new TIG welder!

I have removed that trim before, You've done the hard part, which is finding the tiny countersink screws beneath the paint. The ones I have removed has a heavy seam sealer beneath that affixed them onto the body before the screws were added.

---John

I am finally getting around to completing this post. Each side has the long curved piece held on by 6 screws and the short vertical piece held on by 3 screws. After getting the car media blasted it was much easier to see they were separate pieces, and they were stuck on with lots of the same white seam sealer used on the rest of the car. It took some prying to finally get them off, but I am sure glad I did!! Under the left piece where the roof attaches to the body there was lots of hidden rust and I think some of it was structural. I was able to get at the rust and repair everything with the trim off, but would otherwise never have seen it. Today I finally took my car over to the painter! After fabricating and welding and grinding for the past year, this was a big day!

Definitely better to find that rust now, than later!

---John