After a particularly heavy rain shower, I happened to be in the back of Nina, and noticed a puddle of water on the floor under the drivers side rear side window. I had noticed the stains on the plastic before now, but not really thought about it. The water was leaking from the outside, through the windows rubber seal and making it's way inside and running down on to the floor.
Well, remember Dave from 5 Valleys Windscreens, the company that put the new side windows and a new windscreen in the T4 ? Well I gave him a call to ask him to come out and have a look and quote me for maybe replacing all the window rubbers, so that I could be sure I wouldn't get the problem again for a few years. Dave came out and had a look, and it turns out these are special window rubbers, and something he probably couldn't get hold of now, so he went away and left me with the task of trying to get the rubbers, and he would come out and fit them.
On the sides of Nina are badges that say Wilker Uk, this is a company that converts these vans into Ambulances for the NHS. Their main office is based in Ireland, so I gave them a call and they gave me the numbers of two companies that they use to get the window rubbers from. One was called Baines based in the East somewhere, and the other was called Stedall who are based locally to me down in Yate.
Unfortunately calls to both companies has drawn a blank, neither stock the rubber which it seems was a specific rubber to the Renault Master. I even had to cut a piece of the rubber out from the leaking window so that I could get the profile of it to show them.
This is the piece I cut out, I had to glue it back together as it came out in chunks where the rubber has deteriorated over the past 10 years.
This is an ongoing problem still, and I'm unsure what to do about it, I think I can rule out getting this seal again, so I need to find something that will do the job in it's place. Worst case scenario, and a road I don't really want to go down, is to replace all the windows using the same type of seal that was used on the T4.
I've looked at newer Master ambulances and they don't use this flush fitting seal anymore, but a rounded seal that still shows the shape of the panel indent where the windows are fitted.
The window at the back, on the left of the photo, is the problem window.
PROBLEM : Ongoing.
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Location:Gloucester
Can you not get the rubbers from another van? there's one in Woodchester going for spares, Nigel Scottford's do you know the place?
ReplyDeleteHi Graham, no these rubbers are specialist and literally stuck in place. I have tried everywhere I can think of, including the people that did the Ambulance conversion, but the rubbers arent made anymore sadly.
DeleteI dont know Nigel Scottfords, but will look for him, have a couple of other bits I need !
Thank you for commenting :), its great to know the blog is actually eing read !