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Failing seam sealer on 2G

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EVLGSX

5+ Year Contributor
655
253
Dec 7, 2017
Wallingford, Connecticut
One of the things thats been on my list that I am finally getting to is the failing seam sealer all over my 97 GSX. The car has less than 80k on it but its obviously old now. Almost every bit of seam sealer on the car is dried out, not sealing anything, and is very brittle. If left unattended, water is able to work its way into every sheet metal joint on the car and create rust in very unfortunate locations. If your car is in good shape and you plan to keep it, this is something you will want to address.

On my car, the sealer beads are so brittle and dry that I am able to simply chip/pick it off with a flat blade and pick. This is actually making the job much easier and straight forward as its cleaning off entirely and leaving a great surface for a new bead. I am catching it before any rust has really started. This is also a car that will be getting painted jams and all in the next few months so now is the time. I have had other DSMs where the seam sealer was fine and there was no reason to touch it.

I will be using SEM self leveling seam sealer to seal all the joints that I clean up. This is a great product if you know how to use it but it requires a special gun and static mixing tips which are rather expensive. Regular 3M urethane seam sealer would be fine for this application.....but if youve never worked with it, I would recommend practicing laying out beads on something before you go near your car with it. It can get messy.

I will update with more photos after I finish it all up. Right now I am doing the drip rails under the lift gate and the joints at each end of the cowl.
 

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Heres the rear gate jambs all sealed up with the SEM self leveling product, and one of the joints at the right end of the cowl. This stuff dries pretty hard and will last a long time. Its also nice because its not a nuisance to prep around, meaning that usually with urethane seam sealer, you would prep, seam seal, paint, in that order. This stuff can be scuffed with the jambs and painted whenever the time comes so its okay to seam seal, let time go by, then prep and paint. This was one of the main reason I used this stuff.
 

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Thank you for showing this. It can get overlooked easily, and water seeping in, it will eventually cause other problems. Knowing which products to use, for best results, saves a lot of frustration.

I’ll be checking these seams out on our Spyder, when it comes out of storage this spring.
 
Obviously the Spyder isnt going to have the same seems in the rear as the ones in my photos of the hardtop car, but go over the whole car and inspect the condition of the seam sealer all over. Just make sure its not all dried and cracked like my photos show. Let me know if you have any questions. Also, I will add the part #s of the products I like and have used 100s of times in the past.
 
That is true, huge issue there, I did mine last year. Very easy to deal with if you have the right stuff and easy to finish off with undercoating as it requires a lower level of finesse. The front of the rear wheel house is a bad spot too. Get that closed up asap as it gets worse fast. Almost all of the 2g DSMs Ive seen are open there, and crap flings in from the wheels and things go downhill from there fast, even mine was starting there and this car is very mint.
 
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