I ordered a Steele rubber kit for my 57 Fleetwood and several of the pieces were too long or too short and the alignment pins were in the wrong places. Steele told me there were two different bodies for the 1957 60 Special. They have had this trouble before.
They were great about promising to send me replacements for the parts not fitting which was most of the order.
Has anybody else ran into this problem? My body tag says body by Fleetwood. The Steele kit says it fits the Cadillac 60 special and the Buick also. Were some 60 specials Buick bodied? How could anybody keep track of all of the differences. My car is 18??? so I am assuming it is 18 thousand into the production and I have heard that about 20,000 60 specials were produced.
NO. Total bs. The 60 Special IS different from the series 62 sedan and Sedan deVille. Fleetwood and Fleetwood alone made every body for every Cadillac at that time. Sure some things were shared throughout the other lines but Buick did not stamp, paint, wire, and upholster your car.
I do not disagree Walter but why are there different dimensions for the same rubber components? This seems to be in the door area. The provided rubber for the front doors are too long and he rear too short and the dripline molding is wrong also.
They sent you the wrong parts.
I talked to two representatives at Steele and they both said it is a reoccurring problem. They also promised to fix it immediately, whatever that means to them? Could Buick have used some Cadillac parts? I know this was common earlier. Of course they are the wrong parts for my car, no dispute about that.
The Buick and Cadillac shared the same C body. The fleetwood had a longer wheel base and trunk, but the weatherstrips were the sale physical dimensions. Can't speak for the precise location of the attaching pins. Back then, only the Roadmaster, Roadmaster 75, and Super shared the C chassis of Cadillac. In 1958, the Buick Limited shared the longer trunk, but not the longer wheelbase.
Steele Rubber can do errors. For example, the trunk weatherstrip for the '57/'58 Brougham they are selling is the wrong type. They sell the weatherstrip used till 1956 on the regular Cadillac cars for the Brougham when the weatherstrip for regular 57 cars to ... will fit perfectly.
Years ago, I sent a not to them about that; they still offer the wrong trunk weatherstrip for the Brougham.
Steele Rubber also seem reluctant to correct errors . When I rebuilt my 57 Seville I ordered nearly all the 57 parts from the catalog I spent ages trying to find out where the rectangular firewall grommet fitted until I asked the question on this forum and found out that it is a 58 only part. A few months ago I saw that Steele were advertising the part on Ebay as fitting 57-58 so I sent them a message saying it is 58 only. Their response was to agree that it is 58 only and that the listing would be changed immediately,three months on - no change .How many more of you with 57 cars have a useless $38 grommet sitting in their spares box.
It will be interesting how this ends up. Steele Rubber still claims there are differences. I will contact the other suppliers and find out what they say. I purchased my Steele rubber as a complete package on eBay and they guarantee the fit so I am assuming I can send the whole package back. I know others are priced lower and I also know that in the past I have had a few Steele components that were too firm to seal easily but normally they have everything one could want. Although the most visible change in the 1957 to 1958 is the difference in the stainless panels on the rear quarter and the 58 having Quad headlights I am beginning to wonder if there are other subtle differences in the body or did Steele just err?
I ordered Steele products and found there are some differences. Mine was the door seals for my 55. I did my homework on it first and saw the different types and ordered what works for my install
They are really the only place that makes all the seals anyway, no one else makes them all. There is one other and only do a couple seals in my case.
I Ordered through rubber the right way, they get from Steele rubber and are cheaper than what Steele rubber charges, and have great customer service with problems, returns or exchanges.
They are cheaper than manufacture, the manufacture is more into selling to resellers than dealing with buyers, they do help over the phone and email on questions.
Some of the products you order from rubber the right way come straight from Steele rubber direct.
Jason
I replaced the rubber with Steele rubber on both my '58 Sedan (2000)and my '58 Fleetwood 60S(2012) and both kits were damn near completely wrong. Pieces way to long, too short, pins in the wrong areas, as I recall I basically had to take what they had sent me and remake it myself by cutting pieces and re-locating pins. Seems to me they don't care as long as we keep buying their sub-par rubber products.
Jason and Graham, thanks for the input. I had purchased Steele in the past without problems.
Some purchases were through other vendors who were actually selling for 25% less than Steele list prices.
Having said that Steele has acknowledged the problem and said yesterday they would ship today. I called back and said I was in rainy Seattle and no room in the garage and the old rubber was stripped from the car. They said they would "Overnight" it yesterday afternoon because of my situation. Now to see if they follow through. We have a dry spell predicted so I will concentrate on this problem and report the results as a followup item when done.