This is a good tip.  Although, far from a "perfect" paint job, it's much
better than just masking the rubber.

Personally, I have very little issue with reinstalling the left rear window
on a Westy (with cabinets in place).  There are a few tips and tricks, but
it's really not that hard to do, but kind of hard to explain as you need to
create four loops in the cord used for the install.

Cheers,

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Jim Felder
Sent: Sunday, April 21, 2013 3:47 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Painting tip--leave your window rubber in place and still get a
perfect job

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