Waistline trim- revisited

Any faithful readers out there will remember that when I got this car the waistline trim was missing on the driver's door. It was also damaged around the nose of the car- a feature that wasn't improved by the garage crashing into it with their recovery truck! Although I did replace the door trim- this wasn't a match and combined with the fact that the nose was damaged, meant that this is a problem that would always have needed to be revisited. Its also true that at the moment I have three different types of waist trim on my car and I'd like to unify the style.

I therefore eventually bit the bullet and bought a complete "car's-worth" from SJSportscars. The rear of the car is OK and provided that the new stuff matches then I won't need to touch that. I also bought a new tube of adhesive.

Anyway Steve supplies a handy guide to refitting the trim- reproduced in full below

Hints & tips... taken from SJSportscars website....


"Instructions for waistline fitting. Remove the old trim. This should be simply a matter of pulling. Be a little careful, sometimes it is possible some repaired sections might come away with the trim. Paint can also come off, if it was done poorly last time. Clean off the remains of any old adhesive. In the case of the door sections, make sure the carrier strips are secure and in one piece. These are often held to the doors with small self tapping screws which can go rusty creating a lump in the trim. You should consider replacing these with the currently recommended countersunk pop-rivets, SJ075W0011. Sand the vertical face of the body lip with course sand paper. The new trim is made soft and workable with a heat-gun. It will melt or burn, if you get it too hot. Put a section on the car and then gently shape and push on to the lip. Secure with lots of strips of masking tape. Do not pull these too tight, they can cause dents in the finished trim. You need to use a lot of the strips of tape. Do not stretch the trim as you apply it. Over the years that it will last, it will shrink, it will also shrink a little as it cools, so do not stretch it now. On the Esprit S1 & 2 the front wing section needs to be trimmed in thickness so it sits flatter against the body as it goes under the front bumper. Do not attempt to join any section of trim, it will not work! When you have the complete car covered, and the ends trimmed, slightly too long, leave the car overnight to cool. Gently take the trim off and you will find it will stay in the correct shape. With a small piece of left-over trim, gauge how much of the Polyurethane adhesive SJ075B0007 to put into the groove of the trim. This will vary as the size and depth of the lip does change. You need enough to touch the flat face of the body which you sanded earlier but not so much as it comes out. Apply adhesive in the groove of each section of trim and attach to the car. Check as you go, that the glue is making contact to the flat face of the body as planned. Hold each piece in place on the car with lots of tape as before. When you are happy, leave over-night to set. Remove all the tape and trim the ends at the required angle. Theses are around 30 degrees, except for the front of the doors, which need around 60 degrees. Fill the open holes in the ends with more adhesive and smooth off. Steve Roberts"


The first step is to remove the old trim- nothing much seemed to be holding this on and it came off easily.

This left a few lumpy bits of old cement but remarkably little. I smoothed the edges and chipped of any old lumps with a paint scraper

Using a paint scraper to remove old adhesive from the flat edge of the ridge.

Cleaning the join up to the the wheel arch which still needs doing so you can see before and after.

Wheel arch still not cleaned. It seems that dirt has been working its way in behind the trim strip and this all needs to be removed.

I need to rub down the  edge of the join to help the new cement key but I will do that before sticking the new trim on.

The new strip is pretty stiff and wants to stay twisted in a coil. I used a hot air gun to make the strip more pliable and eased it into place on the waistline whilst its still warm- its pretty awkward and you have to be careful that it does clip under the ridge as well as over or the profile will be distorted. I left a 4 inch overhang at each door end as I expect the trim to shrink a little so its not a good idea to cut it to the right length at this stage.

Heating the trim- it doesn't need much to become soft and obviously avoid heating the car! However it does cool quickly so you might like to try putting the strips of masking tape in place before easing the trim on so you can hold them quickly.

I held the trim on with masking tape as I went- its a little easier if you stick the top of the tape on the car before you heat the trim. Then you can fold the tape down and secure the strip as you clip the trim onto the ridge. Take special care at all corners

Make sure it stays on the corners...

 Trim secured around the nose

I left the trim to cool overnight and hopefully adopt its new shape.

I hadn't meant to leave the trim for longer than overnight... But SWMBO decreed that the long-deferred bathroom renovation could wait no longer. Although the bathroom is of course indoors I had to waste the last three decent car-working weeks of the year doing this...

Luckily a sunny day in November meant I could get back to it. The tape hadn't held the sections from wheel arch to door and the excess length I had left there meant that these had twisted and reset themselves in a warped position... I had to reheat these and ease them back into position, trimming them so that they could lie flat against the door.

In order to finish the body prep and glue the trim strip I was going to have to remove it from the car again. I was concerned that when I started to stick it back down I must start in the right place or the wheel arches wont match with the shaping in the trim. I stuck a piece of masking tape to the trim and made a pen mark on the tape and the body ridge so I could align the strip again.

tape and body alignment markings. I made these on both sides and started on the driver-side. When I reached the end I was only a mm or so out.

I let the newly-set sections cool and then removed the trim section from the front of the car... Steve is quite right, it did retain its shape.

Trim shaped around wheel arches..

... and front of body

I could then sand the body ridge removing old adhesive and giving a key to the top for the glue to grab.

Sanding the top of the ridge- I also sanded the sides where there was any residual glue using 180 grit. Take care not to mark the body itself!

The internal width of the trim section is 7mm and the depth 9mm. The ridge on the car is 7mm high and projects 6mm from the body. This means that when the trim is pressed into position there should be a 3x7mm cavity that needs to be filled with adhesive. A 5mm round bead has about the same cross-sectional area and so should fill the space completely. I  decided to be a little more generous and cut the cartridge tube to give a 6mm diameter opening. I glued a small length of trim and clipped it into position- smoothing it down with a roller. I went on neatly and seemed to grab quite well. When I pulled it off the glue had coated the top of the ridge as intended.

Rolling my test strip into place.

Test strip removed, good coating to top of body ridge.

I was now happy that a 6mm bead should do the job so I set about gluing the pre-set trim strip.
I had intended to glue it all and then fix it on all in one go. However I decided against that because I hadn't realised how slow pumping out a 6mm bead would be. The glue is viscous and takes its time. Sadly this sticking process is time-limited because the bead will start to skin over at a rate dependent on temp and humidity. I'm working in November and I expect humidity will be high! I decided to fit the trim in 3 sections, driver side, front and passenger side, fastening each section in place before gluing the next.

The viscosity of the glue also meant that my goal of an even 6mm bead inside the strip was hard to achieve, in all honesty it was more like 6mm beads on a string.

Hard to see but my attempts at an even 6mm bead were more like beads on a string.

I applied extra adhesive around the front corners and the trim bends for the wheel arches. I used new masking tape to hold it in place- you will need a lot. Use the wide stuff and get decent quality, not the stuff that rips all the time as you will need a lot of it. I used 1.5" frog tape. You will find your own way I'm sure, but I found that it worked well if you tore off a strip of tape and stuck it to the outside edge of the trim. Then push through the tape so the trim is squashed against the body and stretch the tape above and below, sticking it to the body to hold it in place. Finally I went all round with the wallpaper roller to identify any sections that were lifting up from the body and applied more tape in those places to try and hold it down as the adhesive sets.

Setting is temperature dependent and as its struggling to reach double figures today despite the sunshine I will leave it for a few days to set properly.

The method calls for all the free ends of the molding to be cut at 30 degrees except "the front of the doors" which is cut at 60 degrees. I'm interpreting this as meaning that the trim on the door is cut to 60 degrees, but I have seen cars where the trim in front of the door (ie the rear of the front wing) has been cut to 60 deg and the door to 30. 

I cut the trim at the rear of the front wing to 30 degrees using a set square to gauge the angle

Trim cut off

Infill the cut end with PU adhesive and rlatten with a moistened finger. Note I haven't done the door trim yet!

 I think the new waistline and new bumper  improve the look greatly. I still need to clean up a little and replace the trim on the door, but this is a nice straightforward piece with no bends or curves so I will get on with that at my leisure.

New bumper, reg plate and waistline trim... Look greatly improved... feeling chuffed!

New trim on front wing side, new paintwork above.