Pillar Post Weatherstrip Convertible 10/1987-1993

If you drive a Fox Body Mustang convertible, I hope like with our '90 here, it spends most of its time with the top down. On that rare occasion where you have to put the roof up in case of rain or if you're washing your car, there's nothing worse than water getting in your interior. One of the most common places is this pillar post here. So today, we're going to show you how to replace your pillar post weatherstrip.

For this installation, you'll need a panel removal tool, Phillips head screwdriver, scraper, right angle driver, T20 torques bit, small pick, plastic pry bar, cutters, and weatherstrip adhesive.

This is typical of the pillar post weatherstrip found on a Fox Body convertible. You see how ours is torn, it's been glued before, and it's coming apart. Obviously water and air are both going to get through that, so we're going to want to replace it.

The first step is to remove the metal clip at the top of the weatherstrip. There's a little metal clip underneath this corner here. Simply pull it back, pull it away from the clip, and slide the clip up. You'll need this for your new weatherstrip. The rest of the weatherstripping is glued in this channel, and it's going to go all the way to the bottom of the pillar post. The only way to get it out is pretty much to rip it off. A small plastic pry bar will help. We're going to use our pry bar and get all the little pieces out of the channel.

Now we have the pillar post weatherstrip removed, we can see that our door weatherstrip is also pretty shot, so we're going to replace that while we're here as well. We're going to remove the channel for the pillar post. To replace the door weatherstripping, we'll pull off the pillar panel, the speaker cover, kick panel, the door sill, and loosen up the quarter trim panel as well.

The speaker grill is held on by one screw on the side. Now we can pull up and out and disengage the plastic clips, and remove the speaker grill. To remove the pillar, you've got to remove the sun visor as well: the three screws here and then two more to get the pillar off. We'll now remove the pillar screws. Now we'll remove the four screws that hold the door sill plate on.

Now we'll remove our kick panel, it's held in place with one of these Christmas tree clips. A lot of times these do get broken, so it's a good time to replace them. And we're going to remove our kick panel. We're going to remove the two screws that hold the quarter trim panel on. We don't have to remove this, just have enough play to be able to get the weatherstrip past it. We're going to separate it from the end tag here, and then start removing it.

The weatherstrip is going to mount to this pinch weld that goes all the way around your door frame. You want to make sure you get any excess off before you try to install the new weatherstrip. Our door weatherstrip kit is going to be universal for coupe, convertible, or T-top cars. With a convertible to T-top, you'll have to get it in place and then cut off what you don't need.

This end here is going to go over your pinch weld, the rubber part facing the outside. We're going to start by putting it over the factory end cap, and then just going to press it onto the pinch weld. You want to make sure in the corners you get it in as tightly as possible. You want to trim it so it comes right to this edge here and stops.

Now we're ready to install the channel for the pillar post weather strip. It's going to wedge between your door weatherstrip and the outside pillar post. You want to kind of push it in and push down on the door weatherstrip and get it in place. Now we're going to reinstall our pillar, and our speaker cover. We'll reinstall our visor. Now we'll reinstall the kick panel. And we're going to reinstall our two screws in our quarter trim panel. Now we can install our door sill plate. I sprayed a little WD-40 to lubricate the channel before we install.

Put a thin line of weatherstripping adhesive on our new weatherstrip. Then line it up with the channel and slide it into place. Before you push it all the way into place, you want to reinstall the metal tab in the top. Get that seated, and then you can slide it the rest of the way down.

Our new door and pillar weatherstrip should do a much better job keeping water and air out of our Mustang convertible. Installation could take you a few hours per side. You'll be back on the road in no time.