Thread: 48 vent glass

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Just to add to the above, you need to look at the "slot" at the point where the vent wing divider is. If you take out the divider is the slot straight to the front or does it have a slight jog? I don't remember the Chevs of that era well enough to recall. If it's straight, then you can just have a piece of flat glass made to fit. If it's got the jog then you'll need to do some metal work to have it look right and maybe cant the wider slightly. As for sealing, both the fuzzy strip at the bottom of the opening and the channel run that goes around the opening and down into the door come in cut to size lengths, also available from a good glass shop. You'll have to make a metal U channel inside the door at the front to retain the channel run and act as a guide for the glass as it goes down inside the door. Odds are you'll have to move the wider mechanism forward in the door to to center it up on the new glass, they work better in the center. Some have tried to leave it in the stock position, but even with a good channel run the weight bias tends to cock the glass in the runs and causes some bind. If the glass shop is reluctant to invest the labor to make the new pattern for the increased size, or wants to charge an arm and a leg just to see how serious you are, then you can make, and test, your own pattern. Just use a piece of masonite that's the same thickness as the glass to fab a mock-up. Depending on your pattern making skills you may want to begin with a piece of cardboard to get the proximity. Make sure you smooth the edges so it doesn't snag the channel run. Once you've got the masonite pattern shaped, install the new channel run, install the pattern in the wider as if it were the glass, and test run that mother. If it's too loose, make another one after noting where you undersized it. Obviously, if it's too tight, gradually trim it down til it works smoothly. It can be tedious, which will give you a clue why the glass shop might not want to mess with it. Hopefully you installed the front channels on each door in the same place, and that the factory tolerances on the window opening are pretty close from side to side. If so, you can use the one pattern for both sides. When you give the pattern to the glass guy make sure he understands that you've made an EXACT pattern and that he should neither be under nor oversize on his finished pieces. The rest is just normal glass install procedure.