3 Crucial Ways to Care for Your Car’s Weatherstripping

Those rubber door seals around the edges of your car doors are crucial in keeping rain, sand, frigid wind, and moisture from seeping through the gaps into the cabin. If that rubber lining gets damaged or deteriorates, the atmosphere in your cabin will be the same as it outside — whether that’s hot and humid or cold and icy.

To prevent that from happening, here are some ways to care for your car’s weatherstripping.

1. Wash the weatherstripping
Keep the rubber strips clean by washing them regularly with car-safe soap and warm water. Dip a rag or sponge in the bucket and scrub any dirt off the lining. You should do this on a regular basis at the same time you wash the rest of your car — which should be seasonally. All it takes is a couple of minutes and a tub of soapy water.

2. Reattach any loose lining
Keeping the car’s weatherstripping securely in place is crucial so it performs properly and keeps the moisture out of the cabin. When cleaning the weatherstripping, inspect it to ensure it isn’t coming loose anywhere. If it is, reattaching it is simple. You can buy a tube of weatherstrip and gasket adhesive from a manufacturer like 3M for only a couple of bucks. Follow the directions on the tube to adhere the rubber to the metal panel again.

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