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Ford Transit Sliding Door T-Vent Window Install (Amazing Transformation!)
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May 3, 2025
Today Nick at Van Builder HQ Nick is installing a CR Laurence Sliding Door T-Vent Window for his latest Ford Transit Van Conversion Build. Visit https://www.vanbuilderhq.com to learn more. Interested in buying a van? Check out https://www.odysseycustomvans.com Support Van Builder HQ on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/vanbuilderhq
View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:10
hey guys welcome back to the shop today is exciting because we're going to be installing the tv window from cr
0:15
lawrence in the driver's side the passenger side part of the van
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we do have a window for the driver's side but keeps getting put on back order
0:26
hopefully this week we're going to go down to south carolina and pick it up from the
0:31
cr lawrence location there i'm actually having to return this one because
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uh the spacing right here the first thing you want to do when you take it out of the box is make sure that
0:46
this spacing is not off because once this is closed if this is off
0:52
you'll never get the window to seal and so that's the issue that i'm dealing with with the first one so
0:59
hopefully that return will go well with no problems and yeah my email today
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some pictures and a lot of good stuff but we're moving into this portion
1:11
now what's interesting about the passenger side is
1:17
if we take our trim ring and we'll bring our trim ring into the van
1:31
so this is the trim ring that comes with the kit you'll notice
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okay when we put the trim ring up you know pretty standard first thing is to
1:45
know that you're going to have a door unlocking pin
1:51
you're going to want to make sure that you don't cut that off when you're cutting into the van to jigsaw and do
1:56
all that stuff the other thing to watch out for
2:06
is it's not a perfect representation of the layout uh or the profile of a ford transit
2:14
window it's really close so if we just start down here on the bottom left
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what i've done is i put the trim ring down here and i've cut out or i've put a permanent marker on where
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the trim ring goes and again as i talked about the uh
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the video about the adb 1033 windows
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you always gotta work watch this radius because this radius is what is uh most important so right here is
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the factory and then you can see we're gonna have to cut into this radius then it goes up
2:52
the factory line is pretty good no problems and then right here you see it's
2:58
actually going to come in and then it's going to start here so we're going to cut this rib out
3:05
obviously uh we'll cut this rib out but again it goes along the top and wherever you see
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a black line that will have to be slightly trimmed well possibly
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may not have to but we'll have to see um then we have this radius again this
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radius on this side does come in and match this line coming down which is good
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but then right when you get down here you see how it bumps out a little bit and then comes back in
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so that's what we're gonna have to watch for um
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if we go back out here to the
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passenger side um what we're gonna have to do
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is kind of like what we did for these windows so if you remember what we did for these windows is we drilled two
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pilot holes out that were at the top of our our layout marks
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and then we used our template and adjusted it right there so that we wouldn't know how high or low
4:12
we were supposed to be and our left or right didn't really matter because we actually knew our center point
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the problem over here is you don't really have any center point to reference
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so what you have to do is when you make your template
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uh or what i'm gonna do is i'll drill a top mark where that line was i'll go down i'll drill a bottom
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hole where that line again was where i cut the ribs out
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then i'll do one on the right and then i'll do one on the left and that way i can locate the template up and down
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and then i can do it left to right and that'll that'll center everything up for me
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so the next biggest challenge here is to go ahead and cut out our template
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we'll do the same entire same process that we use for this and i'll show you here in a second
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um we're going to use a piece of this box that it came in
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and then we'll just go we'll cut a probably cut the whole face of the box out and we'll put the box up over here
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um and then we'll actually put the trim ring on it
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grab the inside the trim ring and then when we're done we will come and put it on top of here we'll cut out a notch so
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this can go through and then we'll go and take our razor
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with extremely sharp blades some new blades and then we'll come through and we'll just kind of go through and score
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this uh whatever extra is on here because again remember
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you want your template is tight to this line
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not the trim ring the trim ring is going to be more
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it's going to have more slack in it lack of a better word
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and since it has more of a gap um so for some forgiveness
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you want your template to be this line right here this edge
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is where you want your template to just i mean just be precise as possible what's nice is if you're just right on
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this plane of this line and you cut your hole out like that when you go in to trace your
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template you can take your jigsaw and just cut out your permanent marker line just cut
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out straight on that line so the blade is matching the marker line and that's going to give you just a
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perfect perfect fit um
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the one challenge about that is getting it so perfect especially on the passenger side
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or the driver's side when you're doing the t vent is you won't be able to really adjust it it's pretty much
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you know where it's at is where it's at um and if that's the case you know we might
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have to do some modification but i try to be as precise and exact as possible and then if i can go back i can
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take i can always take out more material you guys have heard me say that before
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but really what we want to do is on this side those windows need to be precise because where they're at is
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exactly where you're visually going to see it here you got a little bit more forgiveness because
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you want to be able to match the profile here and that's really the
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usually the whole reason why you buy that type of sierra window is you want to be able to have that factory window
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looking uh aesthetic so we're gonna go ahead and get that box
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um one of these days when we get this van out of here we'll clean this shop up
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um it's been busy so getting a little a little cluttered but uh mostly that is
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just uh these are all the pre-cut insulation panels from adventure wagon
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and just give you guys a quick update
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um we've gotten this whole entire section done we've got this whole entire section done
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as soon as we uh we'll tape this off of painters plastic as soon as we get this window out and then this i mean this one in and
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this window in then we can rotate both off
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to our vent fan and then we can actually get started with knocking this interior out so
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i'm excited for that but let's go ahead and jump over to the window start cutting out our template
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and if you want to know how to cut out a template for a van window we have a link
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to a templating process video as well as drilling and tapping holes
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for the m4 by .70 socket head cap screw modification
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that we've been doing on all these windows and just give you a real quick look at that
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this is what i'm talking about so these are socket head cap screws right here in the window they're not what sierra
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lawrence provides and i did that because i specifically
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on how to locate this trim ring and this window
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i have to take this window out minimum of two times so i needed to be able to have something
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where i could screw it in get the profile take it out
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put this panel in trace it out and then put the window back in
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so i wasn't putting in just one done i needed to be able to take it out and put it back in but this also
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gives a customer the abilities to that just say for example you know they were in bed laying down or
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something happened they kicked the window it broke or a branch came and hit the window
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the way that i do this it's very easy to unscrew take the window out buy a new window pop it back in
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and keep on going so it just makes it really nice and flexible also
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if you are wanting to get uh your van wrapped
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you would be able to take this window out so that they can wrap it and then put it back on top of the wraps you're not having to
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cut over here and potentially having these uh like you know white paint reveal lines
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or whatever paint color you have anyway i digress let's get back over here to
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the window let's go ahead and cut our template out and
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get started with this window install [Music]
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guys let's bring you in here a little closer i've got all the stuff to weigh just
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down the reason that this template is
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difficult is because the trim ring is at uh
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has a curve in it so i don't know if you guys can see that on camera but
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there's a big curve because the uh the four transit curves on the sliding
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door and so you saw how precise i cut out
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the trim ring outline but uh the point i make in my other video
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about these windows is there's a gasket on the outside this window and
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the tighter you cut your template the more surface area of gasket is going
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to be there to seal your window some people complain about these corners
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where they don't actually have um it's not a big deal i don't i don't see
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it often but i do see some videos online where they can't get these uh
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outer corners to seal and the reason is if you follow the trim ring you have
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so much more material that you're leaving i mean you're removing so much extra material
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from the van sheet metal and the more material that you take away from the sheet metal that's not going to be
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the outer of this uh frame the less surface area you have to seal
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water out of the van so it's really again it's very rare but
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you want to do the best job and ensure that you have the least possibility of any type of leaks
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take your ring put it on your cardboard trace it out and then put your cardboard on the window
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push it down especially this one that is curved push this down get it weighed
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and then take a razor and go around and cut off this excess okay
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look how much excess material that we took off
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that was not necessary from the side so this is how much towards overlapping
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this side and i tie i traced out the tight inside of the trim ring same thing
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with this we took this much off so i mean we're adding this up
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i mean that's almost it's almost a half an inch
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and then this was the radius that we cut off on the top right hand side
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so imagine this is all the material you would have taken out of the transit van
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and it was not necessary because the with this uh the window is still gonna fit because
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what we're gonna do is we will now do a marker on the
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outside here and now that'll be our cut line if we have to take a little bit of trim a little bit of more room in the outside
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corners that's cool
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but once this material right here is cut out you cannot replace it
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it's gone forever when you cut it out um yeah i mean it just amazes me that this is this is how much material you
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would be removing look at that
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especially this so remember
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this trim ring this trim ring is not a template
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you can kind of think of it that way this is not a template this trim ring is its only job
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what this trim ring was designed for is to clamp the window into the door
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it's not designed to be you can use it as a reference but you need to clean it up
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after you do because all this is it's just time to clamp it in the window it's not
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designed to be your template you can start from it but i suggest you
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put it on here weigh it down get that curve conform to that curve
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take a razor move it all the way around the outside you're gonna be really happy with the templates you have
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and then that way when we go inside and draw our top screw bottom left and right for our reference
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points we know that we're spot on so we're going to take this off move it
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over to the van and go to our next step all right guys welcome back here inside
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the van we've got our template that we just cut out okay
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and a couple things the first thing i want you guys to notice hopefully you can see the camera if not
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i'll explain it to you as you know how we say we had to cut through this part of the van
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over here if you now notice we don't have to do that at the moment because
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everything looks like it's gonna be able to fit on the inside we do have to cut out this
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we do have to cut out this we do have to cut out this bottom but for everything else
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um we've got room so we've got room side to side
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and we've got room top to bottom so we don't at this moment have to cut out any of
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this van part and that's kind of thing i keep kind of
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you know it's recurrent theme is only cut out what you have to take your
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time might take a little bit longer but uh you can always
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revert back um if you don't take too much material away if you take too much tear material away you're not going to
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have the best fitment that you could um so we're going to go ahead we're going
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to cut this out this one and this one but before i do that we're going to tape our template in here
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and always keep your eye on this uh we're gonna unscrew this and take that out so we don't cut it off
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what we're gonna do now is we want to go ahead and get some tape on here uh and we want to start centering up
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our template on the inside
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as best as we can
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because we're going to take a drill bit we're going to drill through the template and that will allow us to have our
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reference holes [Music] a reference
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locating holes or holes that we can locate
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where this template needs to be when it goes on the other side of the pan
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and just another one of my recommendations always use masking tape
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for me painters tape doesn't cut it it just doesn't hold well enough
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[Music]
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and so we're looking for a consistent distance around where we traced out our
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frame
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so just look around make sure these
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make sure everything looks even you want to have almost just almost maybe
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3 8 of an inch all the way around here is what it should look like it's nice and
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it's a little high in this corner but that's okay because i've already indicated on my template that
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i cut a little tight in here it needs to be a little wider
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so that's okay right there
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so over here looks good
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right here looks good
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if you want to pull it over just a little bit
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that looks good let's go get on top good on the bottom
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[Music]
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do you want to come down slightly
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all right we'll probably do our two holes here
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right underneath these notches i think that'll be good and then we just want to go
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straight through and then when we get to the other side
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and notice how this bends in we won't have a long enough drill bit to where we can just cut through this and not push
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through here um so this keeps nice and flush so we'll drill through here and then
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we'll take the template and then we'll hang it on those uh where the screw holes are then we'll
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tape it and that's how we're going to translate this from one side to the other side
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[Music]
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[Music]
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okay from our template we've got two and one quarter
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from our window so let's just verify that so right here is two and one quarter
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so that looks good two and a quarter
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all right so our template's good there and then when i measured over here this was this needed to be eight and three
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quarters eight and three quarters
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all right so if you're wondering not all the way to this edge probably
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eight in so eight and three quarters
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the glass so eight three quarters is the glass
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it's a template to the tip of the glass and then two and a quarter over here
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it's from the window frame and the edge of the glass
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so i guess it looks like
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it looks like we'll be possibly shifting this
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maybe eighth of an inch to the left but we're going to keep the tip up right
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where it's at but you do not want to go any more further so two and a quarter
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let's say that's your limit so if we need to
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move this back the good news is from right here to
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right here we can just grind that out and then move this back
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the only reason that that would interfere with our install is that
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we don't want the glass resting here we want the glass resting more on the inside
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um that's just what i'm predicting so
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we're going to go ahead trace this out because i'm pretty happy where where it's at
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if i check the bottom here we got an inch and a half to that lip and we got
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inch and a half to that lip so we're good down here
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and up here uh that's an inch and
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three quarters
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we're here we're an inch in three quarters so our template is perfectly
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it's flush we got even here even on the top even at the bottom so let me go ahead
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and give you guys a measurement again this is an inch and three quarters down here
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and up top
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inch and three quarters is it the same
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no inch and a half i don't know why i said three quarters inch and a half on the bottom
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it's not right this is an inch and a half inch and a half of the bottom inch and three quarters at the top
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this is the distance to the top
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it's okay
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all right we're good so what i've done typical ocd fashion
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is i've measured from where the frame this thing's gonna fall off
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so what i've done is i measured where the frame of the window is to where the glass should sit in this
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van we're good here we're good up there we're good here and we're good on this
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back side um because again my whole thing cut as
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minimal amount of material out as possible uh get this window in let's go ahead and
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get our marker and we'll start shrinking
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placing our template when we do this we're going to make sure we push the template
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to the wall and i've left myself a gap between the tape so i can just
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hold it on here and start making my mark
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there's a couple places where i can't make a mark because the tape's there and i'll just go back with a straight edge
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and i'll clean that up [Music]
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let's not forget to make two marks down here just let me know
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that this is where the latch is we went ahead and made our marks over here to know that we need to go outside
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i'm just going to write a little o outside of our line
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and here we have we have our traced out line for our passenger
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window on the sport transit the next step is to go inside
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we're going to grind off our support members and then once we do that we'll come back
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over here and we will make sure to
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it's a little bit wider
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and we're going to make sure to uh tape everything off really well um so that our jigsaw doesn't scratch
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with the paint and then we'll go ahead and get our jigsaw out we'll drill a pilot hole
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and then we'll just go ahead and start and we're going to be cutting on the line we'll be cutting outside of
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the line up here and then we'll go back to on the line all the way around
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and now with this off you can see we can triple check
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um we got
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so what it did is i just made a little dot from the window frame and then that way i can verify that
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our line is going to give enough room for our
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window frame and work great it's very excellent excellent work
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all right let's get to grinding on the inside
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okay now we're going to take our grinder we're going to go ahead and grind out this
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top and the right it's gonna be interesting here because we're gonna have to kind of curve or
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grind just to make that contour same thing for over
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here and then
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the main thing that i explained with other window videos is we're just cutting through this thin piece of metal we're not
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cutting through this sheet metal so make sure we go through you're not going
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too far in because that would be a knot will not be a good
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mistake
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[Music]
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[Music]
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so
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[Music]
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[Music] all right we got everything cut out here we're ready to
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jigsaw this out our next step is to go on the outside tape everything off
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and when we get finished we'll come back in here with a flap disc and we'll grind all
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this stuff off and we'll prep everything for rust preventative um now we'll definitely do a test but
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before we do all that but uh yeah it's exciting we're moving on to the outside
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we're gonna jigsaw [Music]
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you guys definitely need all this ppe because when you get a super fine tip blade to
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cut this out uh the shavings are just very like they are so tiny so
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when you're doing this you're breathing them in um so make sure you do that uh put on
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your gloves let's see what our window looks like
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i did i did this with the angle grinder i don't like to do that because it introduces a lot of heat
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kind of blisters the paint and i have to fix that but it was the fastest way just to do this
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uh so i didn't have to worry about affecting the unlocking thing on the
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inside but yeah let's take all this tape off
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see if we got a good test of it still pretty good about it
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so
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all right looks pretty good to me
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something else that i did is uh i usually put the tape right at the line and i'm glad i didn't because now i can
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go through here and uh take my grinding wheel
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and clean everything up scuff this and that way i can tape it off and do my um
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my rust preventative which is essentially matte black rust-oleum
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does a really good job yeah as you guys can see there
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we got this cut out and before i do the test fit i'm going to grind all this
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just so it's not really sharp and then we'll actually test
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[Music]
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all right guys we got the window in everything is uh fitting very well
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uh you won't be able to see this in the camera but if you look at the top left
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there is i'll take it off the tripod here in a minute
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so everything is nice and flush and one on the inside and i did a little video on my phone to
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show you guys all the edges because the gopro battery is charging all right guys we're going to final
43:15
look around here everything looks really good
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a little wobbly but we've had to go and make some cuts here because of the contour
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other than that and he's really tight
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so that is our window in the van we're going to go ahead and
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tap our holes for our screws and then we'll put it in and everything's perfect
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it's ready to go the hole is ready to be tapped drilled and tapped now something i've
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seen from a lot of the videos online is
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that if you look at the installation this size seems to be
44:21
nice and flush it gives you the thought that maybe this side over here i'll take this off the
44:26
tripod now this side over here on the right is something's wrong with it like it's
44:32
messed up or something like that um but it's actually not
44:37
this is just how aggressive the curve is on a ford transit
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and so as soon as we get this mounted this will actually
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um i don't know if you can see that this will actually suck into the van
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so it looks like it looks like it's a problem
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and i will agree with you it's pretty significant it's my finger
45:10
but it looks like that's just the way it is uh but as far as everything
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else looks really good even this down here i'm happy with
45:23
uh when you open up your window make sure you check out this lip right here
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they're supposed to test this for evenness and i have a window that was not even when i
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took it out of the box um some other stuff about crl there's a
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little some details like that you know some touch-ups they did
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uh a little glass nick with a paint touch-up from them
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uh that's pretty much what you're gonna get these days i'd say um all these windows i've looked at obviously i have some little quirk
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but let's go ahead and take this window off and we will clean up all of our where we
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grind it on the window frame we'll tape it off we'll do our rust preventative we'll
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take the frame put on the table we'll go ahead and tap all the holes and then we'll install it it's pretty
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pretty straightforward so um that is the next steps here [Music]
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all right guys we just finished up drilling and tapping all of our holes in here and there's a lot there's one two three
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four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
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22 holes
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and let's see if this thing can zoom in here so the importance of the holes is to
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really be able to clamp down and get a really good seal on this window
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and it's just my opinion but i think the way that crl does it uh with these pack of screws here
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i don't think this is i don't think that's good that's my personal opinion
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um if you guys can see this you can see just
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uh this is the lip where the um the screw that i put in bites
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so for example it goes in right here and then you've actually got
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threads if you guys can see there's actually threads here that's in focus
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there's just threads on the side wall when you tap it and when you screw it in
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get a really really strong you can make a really strong compression
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however if you use the uh
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got the screws they give you you're basically cutting through this
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lip right here and depending on how good how good you actually drill through it
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um you really don't get a good feel of how good the clamping force is
49:50
um so i just think drilling tap it is better and you can get the
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your other security of putting loctite on it and that way you really don't have to worry about it
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but we're ready to go ahead and put this in everything's cleaned out we've used air compressor to blow out all the
50:07
aluminum filings we've got our frame inside or trim ring whatever you want to call
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it and yeah we're going to put the window in right now [Music]
51:52
[Applause]
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all right guys we installed our cr lawrence t vent window
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so in this window this is the vent so this actually does not vent
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if you guys are wondering just this side um
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from about here all the way around it's very very good
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um the way this back
52:55
there's a bracket back here that is the hinge for all this and it's touching the van so
53:01
that's as far as back as it's gonna go i mean it looks really good
53:06
but if you're wondering if you do install it from here all the way around to here is
53:13
gonna feel like a normal window it's gonna be flush all right flush
53:18
and then just right here and up here
53:23
it's even with this so
53:29
i guess that's just the way it's designed and
53:34
yeah i need to go i went to all those uh van shows and i didn't really look at
53:40
other ones up close but yeah that's um that's what it looks like
53:45
all right so we're gonna wrap this video up we're gonna go back inside i'm gonna unscrew
53:51
one bolt at a time i'm gonna lock tight it and then i'm just gonna re-torque down all the bolts
53:56
once i finish with that i'm all set to go if you guys have any questions on how to install this tv window on the sliding
54:04
door driver's side of a ford transit let me know put those questions in the comments below and i'll be happy to make
54:11
it or answer those in a future video until then i'll see you guys in the next
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video [Music]
54:34
you
#Commercial Vehicles
#Doors & Windows