Cool tip! Thanks, I never would have thought of that!  Jeff Stewart ----- Original Message -----
> Most of what I have learned about painting cars came from the
> Internet.
> Most of that came from Ben Huot when he was into painting and working
> on
> Vanagons. He passed along a very handy tip that I had occasion to try
> out
> this weekend.
> If you want to paint your Vanagon, but don't want to pull and replace
> otherwise good window rubber, especially on the passenger side which
> requires either pulling the overhead and closet cabinets or some luck
> and
> and some pretty fancy rubber wrangling--not to mention the time and
> expense--then do what Ben suggests.
> To get a perfect job with the window seals in place, buy a hank of
> para-cord. Take an upholstery panel tool or other non-marring
> spatula-type
> thing that is sufficiently strong and get it under the edge of the
> window
> rubber. Lift the rubber. With the other hand, go along laying in the
> cord
> into the gap between the body and the lip of the rubber as the plastic
> blade passes in front of it. This goes fast than you think; five or
> ten
> minutes per window.
> The cord can now be adjusted to turn the outer edge of rubber into the
> air
> about 1/8 inch or so from the body by pushing it in or using a pick to
> pull
> it out as needed. Now you can wrap the entire edge of the rubber with
> tape,
> and you have enough room under the taped rubber edge to shoot primer
> and
> paint and of course sand (the rest of the window gets masked as
> normal,
> obviously). When the paint has cured overnight, unmask the windows,
> pulling
> out the outer edge tape as you pull out the paracord.
> The rubber will drop right down into place as is was before, with no
> paint
> on the window rubber and no cleanup to do.
> Jim