The weather was cooperative today and gave me some time to work on replacing my windshield cowl seal. I purchased an
Omix-Ada 12302.05 seal since it was on sale for 35% off (hahahaha...)
I started by removing the cowl and was greeted with a surprise: somehow water is getting into my air intake. I'll have to figure out a way to prevent that another day..
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After that I undid all the bolts to lower the windshield and began to remove the old seal. It was pretty obvious where the water was getting in beneath the seal, there was plenty of dirt and dust where it had remained dry but the edges were cleaner. A bit of Windex on a cloth and all that was cleaned up easily.
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It looked like the new seal didn't use 3 of the 5 plastic push-pins that the OEM seal did, but 2 of them had tiny holes where the pins would be, so I chose to seal those with RTV just in case. After transferring over some plastic rings from the old seal to the new it was time to install it.
This is where the trouble began...
The seal was a bit stiff from shipping and made it a bit difficult to position correctly. The fact that 3 of the push-pin holes are not used also made it much more difficult. Also, the 2 included push-pins didn't fit. They look like they would, but nope. Thankfully I had some on hand that did work (the ones on the left).
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Next I found it extremely difficult to get the seal to sit in the correct position. I'd have to use the cowl screws to position it and raise/lower the windshield a dozen times. Even then, it was only close-ish.
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After I had it roughly in position getting the cowl to line up with the notch was proving to be a nightmare. The seals thickness was also starting to become a major issue as it wasn't allowing the cowl to sit where it needed to.
At this point it really began to become a cascade of nightmares.
I was barely able to get the cowl screws to line up and attempting to tighten them down was warping and egging out the holes a bit, and even then it doesn't sit how it did with the OEM seal. Trying to adjust it I now realized that for some reason the cowl is wedged in super tight now. I wanted to take the cowl off to see what might be the problem, and I can't remove the cowl at all anymore (at least without folding down the windshield, I believe). Seriously. It is so wedged in there with that new seal, I was starting to scratch my hood hinges and I'm sure the cowl was 1 stage from bending.
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Needless to say at this point I'm pretty pissed. Oh but it doesn't end..
I just needed to get it wrapped up as I had other things to do soon. I'm not happy at all with how it's going but figured I could just live with it for now. But then I noticed my wiper shaft is touching the cowl. Went to grab the wiper arm to try it on and sure enough it's touching the cowl too.. Great...
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So not only do I have a horrible fit that bothers the crap out of me, I also can't use my wipers at all without scratching the cowl! Oh yeah.. I'm definitely pissed now.
So that's where it sits currently. I can only hope that seal doesn't leak, but at this point won't be surprised if it does. Supposed to have a good bit of rain tomorrow so we'll see.
When I get another chance I'll probably see what I can do to make the fit better. I honestly don't know that I can. I've still got the OEM seal, I might try to repair it and just RTV the crap out of it.
At this point I've lost all faith in aftermarket seals for the TJ; all the ones I've used have been an awful experience.
I plan to contact Omix-Ada and share my experience and I'm sure I'll get the usual "it's made to OE spec, might've been a bad product, we can try and warranty it" spiel.