Jeff’s late ’55 Chevy Truck Cab gets Weatherproofed
Photos: Jeff Allen and Tony Colombini, Story: Tony Colombini
When I joined the Mercifuls Car Club many years ago, Jeff Allen was voted in on the same day. However, Jeff was a member in the early 1970’s and was threatened to be kicked out of the club if he didn’t get his car on the road. The club is much more lenient now, and after a couple of years, his late 1955, Chevy Truck is just about ready to hit the road.
Jeff sold his Harley and a bunch of parts to pay for this endeavor. As a translator for the medical industry, he works long nights for little pay and his hobby is at the forefront of his lifestyle. Working to build his truck on a tight budget, he makes due with the best parts available and help from many friends. Friends such as Richard Graves, Jack Petitt, Don Chambers, Gordon McIllonie and more.
So here he is with a big-ol grin as he puts the finishing touches on HIS truck.
He ordered the late 55 weatherstripping kit from Steele Rubber and when the glass guys were installing the windshield, they marveled at the quality of the rubber and how nicely it fit. Jeff and I installed the door rubber. The kit comes with pre-tabbed single piece weatherstripping. Due to some metal work on the bottom of the doors, we decided to remove the tabs on the bottom and use a weatherstrip adhesive to make it stick. Note to other newbies at this installation, install the rubber from the bottom corner first and keep the loop of rubber on the outside of the door. We got about 1/3 of the way around and found that the loop on the inside made it impossible to install on the other side of the hinges, so we had to remove a bit of it to stretch it around the door to complete. Other than that it fit in perfectly. We also used some adhesive and non-marring clamps for the tight corners around the body lines of the truck.
Get your rubber parts and weatherstrip at: Steele Rubber
Founded in 1958, Steele Rubber has been making auto weatherstrip and rubber parts to fit classic cars, trucks, and hot rods since the mid 1960’s.
Steele Rubber supplies high quality windshields, doors, windows, hoods and trunk parts as well as hard to find products such as gaskets, pedal pads, fuel systems parts and bumpers. Their parts fit a wide range of makes and models of restoration vehicles.
Lynn H. Steele founded Steele Rubber Products when he began making hard to find parts for his 1931 Cadillac in his garage. Mr. Steele was a tool and die engineer with a love of classic cars and auto restoration. Word of his quality parts got around, orders came in and soon, Steele Rubber Products was a family business operated by Mr. and Mrs. Steele and their children.
More than 50-years later Steele Rubber Products still makes rubber parts and weatherstripping using Mr. Steele’s proven method of manufacturing parts by hand, and developing new parts by using only originals and detailed research.
Over the years they have developed more advanced tools but it is not uncommon to see staff members testing their weatherstripping parts on their own classic cars and hot rods.