How to Replace T-Top Roof Weatherstrip Channels 1982-92 Chevy Camaro IROC-Z

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Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we show you how to remove the weatherstrip channel panels for the windshield pillar, the B pillar, as well as, the T-bar on the T-top. What you should need is just a good Phillips screwdriver. You'll see my vehicle has some East Coast or Northeast corrosion, so I go through trying screwdriver, screwdriver with a hammer, an impact driver which gets one screw and then, finally, I resort to the drill.

We've got the weatherstrip out, but we also want to remove these tracks here, because they're supposed to be black. We want to have a nice paint line right in behind. Most of these come out pretty easy. You'll see Phillips screws right here. These are pretty easy, but up on this one . and anybody that's got a Northeastern car is probably familiar with this ., you can see on this track here for the T-top is pretty badly corroded. We're going to have to look for a replacement. You can also see some screws right here, and they're pretty damaged and pretty rusty. There are four of them. I'm going to show you how to get those out. These ones here come out pretty easily. It's these ones that are down in the track that we've got to work on.

Whenever I have a corroded screw that's rusty or looks like it's in rough shape, the first thing I do is take my screwdriver. Make sure it goes in there well. Make sure you have a good screwdriver with a good tip. The first thing I'm going to do is give it a few taps with my hammer. This does two things. It drives the tip of the screwdriver down into the screw and, sometimes it just shakes enough on that screw where I can then release it. That didn't work. So there's strike one. This method generally works when your screws aren't in too bad a shape but they're just stuck in there. In this case, the heads are a little too rusty so they turn with a conventional screwdriver.

If you're taking apart a car in the Northeast, you're definitely going to want to invest in one of these. This is an impact driver. What you do is, you put it into the screw. Make sure it has some bite and then I'm loading it. What happens is, you hit it with a hammer, the hammer takes care of driving the blade down in for you, and while it's going down it also turns it counterclockwise. It's spring-loaded. I put it in there, holding it down some. I guess you could say, "Foul ball. Strike two,"? here. The screw I'm working on in the picture does not come out, neither do two others, but I am able to get one of them out with the impact driver. After that, I go to the next one, which is drilling them out.

Using conventional drivers and even my impact driver, I was only able to remove one of the screws, so what I'm going to end up doing is using a high-speed drill and drilling off the heads. A good sharp, 1/8" sized drill bit should be able to go right through them. After removal, you can see here, this is the only one where the screw actually came out. This one's been drilled through, so, at worst, I'm going to have to use a slightly bigger screw. It's the same thing back here, and we'll have to take the drill and finish off that screw. The head just broke off. Then we're going to want to scrape all this stuff off, especially this stuff here, all this extra gunk that somebody put on there, I'm sure, to stop a leak. I'm going to remove all that before you strip off the paint to have it repainted.

I'm going to fast forward here as I'm removing the track along the windshield pillar that has five screws in it. I did have to employ a couple techniques. One was just kind of hitting the screw with a hammer to loosen up the screw. Another note, just make sure that you're screwdriver's in good shape. The tip is not mangled or worn out or anything like that. That's a good key to this.


Keep the fast forward going as I take the track off the B pillar. You don't have to remove these, but I feel like if you're going to repaint the car, you might as well take the time because it does make everything look a little better

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