A lot of NSX owners will be aware that there is a wear / failure issue with the rubber boots / gaskets (whatever you want to call them) on the driver and passenger door windows. There is a Honda technical service bulletin available in the Prime archives describing this problem. Unfortunately, Honda does not sell the rubber boots as a standalone item. In the case of the rear boot you have to buy the assembly which includes the door latch release handle, which is a just under $800 touch per door (I think the front one is a bargain at around $200).
A Prime member had done a post (it is in the archives) describing a repair using RTV silicone. I am not a huge fan of silicone as I have experienced problems in the past with bonding failures, particularly when trying to bond the silicon to some types of plastics or plasticized rubber products. While trolling around looking for info on how I could repair / replace an out of production piece of weather strip on a project car I am working on, I came across a post on a TR6 forum talking about using a product called Plasti Dip to repair weather stripping. I picked up some Plasti Dip and had good results with the weather strip repair on my project car, so I decided that maybe this might be a repair alternative for the boots on the NSX.
Plasti Dip comes in a spray can or in a liquid form that can be painted / trowelled on. For this repair I used the liquid version (see photo 1). The cost of the can was approximately $25. It is available in colors, so make sure you pick up the black one unless you want to go for a more radical look! While you are picking up the Plasti Dip, pick up a small can of xylene or toluene (I used toluene – any leftover can be used as octane booster if you are so inclined).
You might also wish to latch on to a respirator with filters rated for organic vapours. Breathing in toluene vapour can give you a definite buzz (and I imagine kill a few brain cells), particularly if the air temperature is high which promotes its evaporation. Keep the lid on the toluene. I left it off while doing the repair and about 1/3 of the tin disappeared due to evaporation (it was a hot day,- +30C, and I had a mask on so I couldn’t smell it as it was evaporating).
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The boots on both the driver and passenger doors were worn with the driver’s door having the most missing from it so most of the photos I have posted are for the driver’s door. Photo 2 shows the driver door boot before I started repairs. The following is the process I used to repair the boot:
Some caveats. This repair will not give you a show-car class result. However, with a little patience, and providing that your boot is not too far gone, you can get a repair that is not obvious unless you are looking for it. I don’t know what the long term durability is going to be like, how this product will work if it is allowed to bake in the sunshine in the southern US for an extended period of time or whether it will remain flexible in cold temperatures (my car goes into storage in early November).
A Prime member had done a post (it is in the archives) describing a repair using RTV silicone. I am not a huge fan of silicone as I have experienced problems in the past with bonding failures, particularly when trying to bond the silicon to some types of plastics or plasticized rubber products. While trolling around looking for info on how I could repair / replace an out of production piece of weather strip on a project car I am working on, I came across a post on a TR6 forum talking about using a product called Plasti Dip to repair weather stripping. I picked up some Plasti Dip and had good results with the weather strip repair on my project car, so I decided that maybe this might be a repair alternative for the boots on the NSX.
Plasti Dip comes in a spray can or in a liquid form that can be painted / trowelled on. For this repair I used the liquid version (see photo 1). The cost of the can was approximately $25. It is available in colors, so make sure you pick up the black one unless you want to go for a more radical look! While you are picking up the Plasti Dip, pick up a small can of xylene or toluene (I used toluene – any leftover can be used as octane booster if you are so inclined).
You might also wish to latch on to a respirator with filters rated for organic vapours. Breathing in toluene vapour can give you a definite buzz (and I imagine kill a few brain cells), particularly if the air temperature is high which promotes its evaporation. Keep the lid on the toluene. I left it off while doing the repair and about 1/3 of the tin disappeared due to evaporation (it was a hot day,- +30C, and I had a mask on so I couldn’t smell it as it was evaporating).
<O
The boots on both the driver and passenger doors were worn with the driver’s door having the most missing from it so most of the photos I have posted are for the driver’s door. Photo 2 shows the driver door boot before I started repairs. The following is the process I used to repair the boot:
1. With a new single edge razor blade, trim back the rough edges of the boot in the repair area. This insures that the Plasti Dip will be bonding to sound material. While I was doing this, a further approximately 3 mm square chunk of the boot came off, so it is important to make sure that what remains of the boot is sound. In photo 2, you can see the ‘crumbly’ edge of the boot in the repair area prior to this trimming.
2. Take a cotton swab and dip it in the toluene and then use this to clean the boot. Clean the trimmed edge and the surrounding area as you are going to have to overlap the Plasti Dip onto the surrounding boot material in order make the repair strong enough. Do not allow the toluene to drip on to painted surfaces. It is an extremely aggressive solvent and I expect that it would do serious damage to your clear-coat.
3. You need a form against which to apply the Plasti Dip as you build up the repair area. I used a piece of cardboard covered with tinfoil which I inserted into the gap that would normally be occupied by the window (photo 3).
4. You will have to leave the door open during the repair process. If you are concerned about running the battery down, particularly if you are running a small battery, you may want to disconnect it or disconnect the interior lights. I turned off the ceiling light but didn’t worry about the other lights. The reason that the door needs to be open during the repair process is that the boot pushes up against the door weather strip when the door is closed which deforms the boot and messes up the repair.
5. I used a flat blade screwdriver with a small blade (1/8 – 3/16” should work) to apply the Plasti Dip. Dipping the blade into the Plasti Dip, I used this to trowel on the Plasti Dip starting at the base of the repair area. In photo 3 you can see that I have made the first application around the base of the repair area. The Plasti Dip has a viscosity similar to corn syrup so you cannot do really thick applications and have to build it up in layers, allowing 30 – 45 minutes between each application for the previous layer to set up. I had to apply 6 or 7 layers to build up the missing area in my driver’s side window boot.
6. Photo 4 shows the boot on my passenger door. You can see that I have built up the Plasti dip above the level or the original boot and that it is also quite thick and lumpy along the top edge. After you have removed the form and after the Plasti dip has set up for about 24 hours, take a new single edge razor blade and trim off the top edge so that it is level with the original boot. You can also use the razor blade to shave down any really big lumps in the repair surface; however, don’t go too far with this as your last step is to take a cotton swab, dip it in the toluene and then rub this over the repair area. The toluene will soften the Plasti dip allowing you to level out the repair area and get a relatively smooth surface. Do this gradually and allow the repair to re-set between the applications of the toluene. The toluene dissolves the Plasti dip and if you apply to much toluene you are going to end up destroying your repair. Photo 5 shows the passenger door boot after trimming the top edge and a couple of applications of toluene. I smoothed it out some more and removed most of those lumps in the final repair.
7. The passenger door boot fix went pretty well. The driver’s door fix not so well, in part because it had a much larger repair area than the passenger door boot. The glass on the doors goes through a fair amount of left-right movement as you open and close the doors. It needs to do this to get a good seal on the door frame gasket. After about a week of this, the repair area on the driver’s door boot started to separate from the original boot material (see the red arrow on photo 6). Rather than start all over, I merely opened up the separation a little bit with a razor blade and then filled the gap in with more Plasti dip. This was done with the door closed and the window glass pushing out on the outer edge of the boot. Three applications of Plasti dip to fill in the gap and some re-smoothing with toluene seems to have resulted in an effective repair – so far. Photo 7 shows the final result. The black Plasti dip is a very good color match to the original boot material.
</O2. Take a cotton swab and dip it in the toluene and then use this to clean the boot. Clean the trimmed edge and the surrounding area as you are going to have to overlap the Plasti Dip onto the surrounding boot material in order make the repair strong enough. Do not allow the toluene to drip on to painted surfaces. It is an extremely aggressive solvent and I expect that it would do serious damage to your clear-coat.
3. You need a form against which to apply the Plasti Dip as you build up the repair area. I used a piece of cardboard covered with tinfoil which I inserted into the gap that would normally be occupied by the window (photo 3).
4. You will have to leave the door open during the repair process. If you are concerned about running the battery down, particularly if you are running a small battery, you may want to disconnect it or disconnect the interior lights. I turned off the ceiling light but didn’t worry about the other lights. The reason that the door needs to be open during the repair process is that the boot pushes up against the door weather strip when the door is closed which deforms the boot and messes up the repair.
5. I used a flat blade screwdriver with a small blade (1/8 – 3/16” should work) to apply the Plasti Dip. Dipping the blade into the Plasti Dip, I used this to trowel on the Plasti Dip starting at the base of the repair area. In photo 3 you can see that I have made the first application around the base of the repair area. The Plasti Dip has a viscosity similar to corn syrup so you cannot do really thick applications and have to build it up in layers, allowing 30 – 45 minutes between each application for the previous layer to set up. I had to apply 6 or 7 layers to build up the missing area in my driver’s side window boot.
6. Photo 4 shows the boot on my passenger door. You can see that I have built up the Plasti dip above the level or the original boot and that it is also quite thick and lumpy along the top edge. After you have removed the form and after the Plasti dip has set up for about 24 hours, take a new single edge razor blade and trim off the top edge so that it is level with the original boot. You can also use the razor blade to shave down any really big lumps in the repair surface; however, don’t go too far with this as your last step is to take a cotton swab, dip it in the toluene and then rub this over the repair area. The toluene will soften the Plasti dip allowing you to level out the repair area and get a relatively smooth surface. Do this gradually and allow the repair to re-set between the applications of the toluene. The toluene dissolves the Plasti dip and if you apply to much toluene you are going to end up destroying your repair. Photo 5 shows the passenger door boot after trimming the top edge and a couple of applications of toluene. I smoothed it out some more and removed most of those lumps in the final repair.
7. The passenger door boot fix went pretty well. The driver’s door fix not so well, in part because it had a much larger repair area than the passenger door boot. The glass on the doors goes through a fair amount of left-right movement as you open and close the doors. It needs to do this to get a good seal on the door frame gasket. After about a week of this, the repair area on the driver’s door boot started to separate from the original boot material (see the red arrow on photo 6). Rather than start all over, I merely opened up the separation a little bit with a razor blade and then filled the gap in with more Plasti dip. This was done with the door closed and the window glass pushing out on the outer edge of the boot. Three applications of Plasti dip to fill in the gap and some re-smoothing with toluene seems to have resulted in an effective repair – so far. Photo 7 shows the final result. The black Plasti dip is a very good color match to the original boot material.
Some caveats. This repair will not give you a show-car class result. However, with a little patience, and providing that your boot is not too far gone, you can get a repair that is not obvious unless you are looking for it. I don’t know what the long term durability is going to be like, how this product will work if it is allowed to bake in the sunshine in the southern US for an extended period of time or whether it will remain flexible in cold temperatures (my car goes into storage in early November).
