Beltline Weatherstrip Kit With Black Beads Coupe/Convertible 1965 Mustang

We get a lot of requests from our customers asking for videos on how to install weatherstrip onto their classic Mustangs. If you own an older Mustang, chances are at some point you're going to have to replace some weatherstripping. One of the more commonly worn out pieces is going to be the beltline, which is found in the door and the quarter panel of coupes and convertibles. Today we're going to show you how to install a complete 8-piece beltline kit using the '65 Mustang Coupe. Also known as dew wipes or cat whiskers, the beltline kit's designed to keep water from your door windows from getting down inside the door or quarter which can cause rust damage down the road. This is a complete 8-piece kit, fitting your Mustang coupe or convertible from 1965 through 1966.

Your front inner and out beltline are going to install using the supplied clips as will the rear outer. The rear inner beltline installs using the supplied staples. The beltline weatherstrip currently on our '65 coupe is typical of what we see for a lot of Mustangs that come in here. The inner beltline, as you can see there's many broken clips, it's not really doing much anymore, all the cat whisker material on the inside, the felt is gone, it's not going to accomplish much at all. In the case of this, they actually weren't removed when the car was painted so there's actually a coat of paint on the top of it as well. We're going to start with the doors and move on to the quarter panels. For this installation I'm going to need a phillips head screwdriver, depending on what kind of window crank and door crank you need you may need a crank removal tool or 4mm allen key, pliers, wire cutters, 3/8" ratchet, 1/2" socket, door panel removal tool, hammer, punch, T10 torx bit, plastic pry bar, drill with either a 1/16" or 5/64" drill bit, and safety glasses.

To be able to remove the original and install the new beltline weatherstrip on the door, we've got to make sure the window can all the way down past the stop. To do that you've got to remove the stop, which means removing the door panel and going inside the bottom of the door. Next remove your armrest, there's two screws located underneath. With the handles and armrest out of the way now we can remove our door panel. There's two different versions of a stop you may find on your '65 through '66 Mustang; the later ones are going to have a stop all the way at the bottom of the door here, we can show you on this clip from the '67 Mustang that we did, in the case of our '65 Mustang, there's actually a stop located right here. We're going to remove these two bolts here and that'll allow us to put the window down further. Now we can roll the window down, go far enough down that we can access our beltline.

We're going to grab our plastic pry bar and start by removing what's left of our inside beltline. As you can see, not much left of it. Now we'll do the same with the outer. If yours is painted over like ours was, we'll grab a razor blade first, just go carefully down the edge here to make sure it's separate. Again, same story, there's no felt left at all on these. Many times the clips will break off when removing your beltline, just grab a set of pliers and make sure all the clips are out before trying to install the new stuff. Now you want to make sure all the holes on the door on the inside and outside are clean and smooth before you install the new beltline. If this sticks out too far, it'll leave a gap and water can get in, so what we'll do is grab a punch and if you have any sticking out like this one, just lightly tap them into place with a hammer.

Before installing you want to remove this blue tape to protect the chrome trim. If you have an early '65 we do have the same kit available which would be a bead instead of the chrome. Now we can start installing the inner. You want to make sure you put it in place with this edge here is facing downward. What you want to do is get all the clips lined up first and typically you can push them in by hand, sometimes you may need a plastic pry bar, but normally you won't. Get them all lined up and just click them into place. Now we can install the outers which are side specific. You want to make sure you get the proper one where this cutout here is going to be on the outside edge of the door. Just like the inner you want to kind of get it down into place and get the clips lined up and then clip them on. Now we can reinstall the window stop and reinstall our door panel.

Before we put the door panel back on we want to put the window down and make sure the stop is adjusted properly, there we go, right where we want it. We can reinstall the door panel. Make sure you push down directly on top of the clip when putting them back in. Now you want to repeat the process on the driver side and move on to the quarter panel. Now we're going to move on to the inner and outer beltline for our quarter windows. To do that we need to remove the quarter trim panel. The first step in that process is to remove our backseat. Just reach under the seat and pull straight up. Your backseat may or may not have bolts at the bottom, if it does just remove them, in our case pull this and pop it straight up. The quarter window crank is held in by one little screw right in the side here, we can loosen that and can pop off the handle.

Now we can remove the quarter trim panel mounting screws, we can remove our beltline. You want to take out the back two screws on your door sill plate. Put the window down here, here we go, get it down below the beltline. Again, since it was painted, we're running the razor blade through just to make sure it separates. Again, like the front, make sure it's smooth. Just like on the front, we're going to line up the rear with the holes and squeeze it into place. Like we mentioned earlier, the factory outer beltline weatherstrip for the rear panels is actually stapled to the quarter trim panel. We're going to remove the factory staples, simplest way to do it is cut them in half and remove them with pliers and you want to cut out the residual staples that were not removed. The new beltline's going to staple in place of the factory right here. Not all the holes are going to line up and the beltline will fit slightly differently. What I recommend doing is line up the front holes here and make new holes in the back if you have to.

Push the staple through from the back, they've actually put holes in the front felt for you. You can flip it around and easily find the front stop and put it through. What I like to do is before you press it in, once you have the staple in, use a razor blade, clear the area under the staple a little bit, get some of the felt out of there, a lot of the staples will sit a lot flatter when it's installed on the car. Grab a small drill bit, just to clean out the holes first. I'll push through the second location of the staple, grab our drill. Once we get the staples in place, we want to grab a decent sized set of pliers, basically want to push down on the top and then turn to get the staple to go into place. Once the staples are bent into place, you're ready to re-install your quarter trim panel. Now you can put your window up, repeat the process on the other side, and we can re-install our backseat.

Our installation's finished. Replacing the beltline weatherstrip on your Mustang is cheap insurance against future rust damage to both your doors and possibly your quarter panels. Installation will only take you around two or three hours, you'll be back on the road in no time.