The 1965 Avion C-10 has four jalousie windows with a total 12 panes. One pane was broken, an easy fix, and fortunately there was significant damage to the frames. Several of the operators were broken and were replaced with new ones from Vintage Trailer Supply. All four windows had the operators on the right-hand side, but with the way things will be reconfigured three will be more convenient on the left side, so I made that change. This involves drilling some new holes in the window frames, but was not too difficult.
I began by removing all of the frames and disassembling them. There are screws top and bottom on each corner that hold the frames together. A few of them had rusted to the point where they couldn’t be removed with a Phillips screwdriver, but I was able to cut a slot in the heads with a hacksaw and use a slotted screwdriver. This is what the window frame looks like in cross-section.
That piece of aluminum that holds the glass in place is really thin! About 0.010″ thick. It’s really easily damaged so I found the only way to clean it was to shape a length of wood with a groove to support it. This allowed me to clean them up without further damage. Several of these pieces had dents in them already, but not enough to affect the function of them. When I reassembled the windows I replaced the original screws with stainless steel. A polished window and one in original condition.
The difference is a lot more obvious in person!
I also replaced the seal along the bottom of the windows and around the frame with Jalousie J-Seal from VTS. This went in easily on the sides of the window frames and on the bottom inside edge of most of the windows, but on a few it was really tight. It seems like there was a variation in the extrusions used in the windows. I found that a utility knife with a very blunt blade (sanded down blunt!) worked will for pushing the seal into the slot.
As mentioned earlier, a couple of the operators were broken. I found that this was due to excessive friction in the parts. With lubrication I was was able to free them up so they work much better now. The rivets indicated in the photo below were the points where it was binding.
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