Cheap easy way to reseal your rear hatch, cut down exhaust s

[Guest bastaad525]

For anyone who has a Z where the rear hatch seal is dried and damaged and is allowing exhaust to get sucked into the car, I found a nice, easy and cheap method for at least temporarily fixing this until you can get that $130 together to buy new weatherstrip. I went down to my local Home Depot tonite and picked up two 6 foot lengths of 1/2" thick foam pipe insulation (the actuall diameter of the tube is about 2" on the outside and about 1" on the inside, the foam itself is a half inch thick). If you've ever seen copper hot water pipes with foam wrapped around it to keep people from touching it and getting burned, that's the stuff. The two lengths were $5 each. The stuff is basically a long tube, made out of dense black foam, that is slit down one side for you to wrap it around a pipe. There were two kinds there, Very pourous kind and very smooth kind, of course you want the smooth stuff for a much better seal. Pull off all your old rubber and put this stuff around the inside edge of the hatch opening, just push the slit area in the foam over the edge so that it kind of 'clips on' to the edge of the hatch opening. It has sticky sides covered with plastic.. you can use the sticky edge for better attachment but I just left the plastic lining on as actually i already have some of the real deal weatherstrip but I just haven't gotten the chance to install it yet, and I didn't want to deal with sticky residue. Anywho, I took the car for a ride on the freeway... usually a very unpleasant experience in this car let me tell you!! Well the smell was cut down to almost nothing at all. Only when severly slowing down (which is when it would be the worst... usually bad enough to burn my throat and eyes) did I smell even a tiny wiff of exhaust with my windows down, with the windows up I smelled nothing at all. Keep in mind you may still have to worry about the tail light seals ($30 a piece) and also look for other openings in the back of your Z. Anyways I just wanted to share this with you guys for anyone who's getting that smell but can't afford the weatherstripping yet. Hope this helps someone else to enjoy driving their Z again as much as it did me

[Guest Anonymous]

good solution. I love Home Depot!

[Dave]

I have a 71 and a 75 coupe and I used a hatch gasket from a 300ZX. The 300ZX gasket is not glued to the pinch weld so it just pulls off. The gasket is a perfect fit on the early Z.

[Guest bastaad525]

Home Depot is a great place for self made car 'mods' I've done everything from this little hatch fix to a complete custom made intake for my EFI 280zx with supplies from them

[DavyZ]

Dave: Gen I or Gen II 300ZX? Forget years, body style is easiest to remember.

 

Davy