Not sure what on earth happened, but I did my typical walk around the back of the car this morning to drive to work and noticed a tear at the rear of the trunk by the rear windshield. Its on that rubber seal kinda to the left and I can see a metal strip inside.

Is this something that is known to happen and how do I fix it? When I open the trunk now I can hear the metal rubbing against this part real quick. I'm scared to open/close my trunk now in fear of tearing this more.

Karl replaced his seal not that long ago due to a leak. Seemed easy enough of a repair.

Blah yay. Looks annoying to fix. Is there a techinfo on it?

Not sure, I've never gone looking for it before.

It appeared to be a pull old off, push new on... type of procedure.

If it is just torn, you could try repairing it with a good rubber glue, or weather strip adhesive. Although I haven't done it, but looking at it, it should be quite easy to repair. As Bill said, it just pulls off, and the new one slips over the metal lip that you seeing through the tear.

The metal has 3 minor bends in it. So at some point this weekend it must have gotten caught on the trunk lid as it was pushed down.

I'll have to try to straighten it about a bit because the tear will have to be held for awhile if I glue it.

I've never used a weather strip adhesive (or rubber glue) before so anyone have recommendations? Looks like 3M sells some, but I'm not sure what color it is. Of course I'll be looking for black.

If you have bent and grinding metal, is there a problem with the alignment of the trunk? It should catch the seal, but not hit hard enough to bend any metal.

As for the glue, 3M goes make black, but I've had some trouble finding it lately. Everything being clean is the most important start, the just follow the directions on the tube.

I was opening the trunk a lot this weekend and I probably shut it by applying pressure on the side instead of the center. However, that seems far fetched to be the root of this problem.

Thanks for the advice though.

I think you are correct in this assessment.

You may want to look at the trunk springs to see if both look ok. Be careful with the springs as there is a lot of energy stored up in the spring.

I had my drivers side spring snap about 4 months after taking ownership of my Bonneville in 04. I was very carefull when opening the trunk. There is only one space that the paint was rubbed off due to the broken spring. I still feel that the trunk body gaps are not correct because of the broken spring. It did not affect the weather seal that you are having problems with.

Here'* a few pics to help show what I have and maybe everyone can suggest specifics...

This first pic is what it looked like before with a bad bend going up:


Just after I took that picture I pushed the metal down to try and straight it and it stuck itself under the window adhesive:


The metal strip didn't pop up so I'm gonna let it stay like that over night hoping it straightens out a bit. Whats weird is that the metal strip was actually overlapping the glass a little bit. So its like the trunk pulled it down when it was shut, then pushed it back away from the lid.

Might seem like I'm making a big deal out of this, but I don't want water leakage.

Continue with some doctoring up this weekend or does this window need to come out? [/url]