Hi guy's!
i will add my 2 cents on this..
I was a auto glass tech for many years and in my experience I have seen many incorrect windshield installations that ended up damaging the glass.
Ford products for many years used butyl rope tape as the glass part adhesive and also as protection for glass parts.
Using the correct size Butyl tape is important but not always easily attained... 3/8",5/16" tape is most commonly available to the shops and individuals via part stores and other sources. 1/4" and even 1/2" are even out there though not as common.
But I have found that Ford factory windshields were installed using diameter tape that fell some where in between those sizes.. Ford always seem to be happy to use stuff not easily found outside the factory.... (like those little 7mm screws cap screws..)
The issue on that though is that the final glass height off the pinchweld was always off somewhat on a replacement... 3/8" made the windshield sit too high causing issues with the clip on trim clipping on incorrectly (too tight) and crowding the trim on the glass...while the 5/16" would let the glass sit too low, letting the trim to be loose enough that there would be a gap between it and the glass which looked bad and caused noise at speed from turbulence.
Another big issue on the thinner tape was it sometimes allowed the glass the slide under the metal stops, causing the glass to crack. a lot of installers would use the 3/8" and stretch it to make it a little thinner.. but it always was a guessing game.
When the business went all liquid urethane bonding the issues could be better or worse depending on the material and skill of the installer.
Anyways, that plastic protector strip on the early models was just pushed on dry and it wasn't uncommon to have cars come in the shop with the strip either falling off or even missing all together. I replaced a lot of those strip even after the factory started putting some butyl in the groove.. using glue to hold them in place was the trick.. As for the stops.. the early cars used just plain bare metal stops while later they started putting a rubber coating on them.... and yes most of those lost that coating after years of use. I know some of the earlier cars came with the rubber and some later ones came without.. so it was kinda hit or miss to some degree on that issue.
One trick for the stops is to use a spray rubber coating like PlastiDip.. it works pretty well.
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