The Stovebolt Site Forums Project Journals Project Journals 1952 Chevrolet 3100 Project

12/14/21: I finally finished rebuilding my vent window assemblies. It certainly wasn’t a “walk in the park”, but I’m a bit of a cheapskate and couldn’t see spending close to six hundred dollars for the complete assembly’s and my past experiences with import parts is not favorable.

The day started out with me not finding the long hollow rivet setting tool I fabricated a couple of weeks ago for the center channel seal. During one of my cleanups, I put it someplace and I could not, for the life of me, find it. I looked for close to a hour then decided to weld an extension on the short setting tool I bought. I went to setup my welder and found out I was out gas. I do have flux core wire for my MIG but didn’t want to go thru the hassle of changing it out, so I decided to just go for it. The welds weren’t the prettiest but it did work.

I had previously installed the glass in the vent window frame that went pretty well once I got the right correct size setting tape.

The only real issue I had was installing the new lock handle. The supplied roll pin would back out after installing it and turning the handle. My solution was to use the original solid pins installed from the bottom. One side is serrated to keep it in place and it worked really well.

Installing the vent window into the frame went fairly well. I really don’t like how the rivets look after setting with these setting tools. It’s also awkward trying to back the rivet to set it. Fortunately the displaced part is under the hinge so it’s not as visible.

Although they are not contours d'Elegance worthy, they look and function really well.