Hello, I am in the process of completing the restoration of our family's Grand Safari. Looking for many parts, statring with weather seals for the rear sliding window/ rear door. Any information or leads would be greatly appreciated.
The tailgate and sliding glass seals interchange for all lines of '71-76 full size GM wagons, but the parts are obsolete and virtually unavailable anymore. All other rubber is available at Steele Rubber and is good quality.
Just to give you an idea, back in about 2001 when I owned my 76 EW, I did a LOT of scouring and found a stationwagons.com member who owned a "very good" condition rear tail gate seal that he removed from a junkyard car. At the time I had found a shop that was able to do custom rubber work (very high end things like one off seals for antique aircraft for one example they showed me) and I took the seal (that he so trustingly loaned me to see about this project) to them and they worked out a way to recreate it... however, the initial cost to create the first one and the mold (which would destroy the donor piece) including 'fixing' the imperfections in the donor piece was almost $1500.00 and that only produced one seal that would need to be returned to the guy who loaned me the donor piece. Then, EACH seal produced would (at that point in time) COST $1100.00 and that's just the cost. At that point in time I had put out postings to the stationwagons.com website and a couple SW groups I was on at the time and although EVERY clamshell owner said they'd love to have one, only 2 people said they'd even CONSIDER one at that price. So, the project was scrapped. AT this point the best there is to hope for is find one that's on a car that's been stored inside. It's just very rare to find one of those cars in any condition to part out. AT this point I'm just happy keeping mine out of the rain and knowing there's some rubber left at all. Good luck, and feel free to post any new findings.
