Dr. Jim
Ram Guru
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2018
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- 763
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- Age
- 76
Like some other forum members have mentioned, I recently became aware of light shining under the upper glovebox door. Previously I had only driven my Ram during the daytime. A few weeks ago, my son and I left his house at 5:00 am to attend a car show. I let my son drive while I rode “shotgun.” With the darkness, I found the seepage of light for 150 miles to be intolerable. So, I vowed to try and fix it. I know some members had their dealers replace the glovebox door while others had the glovebox readjusted. I first tested how the glovebox lamp works. With the truck parked in my garage and without the engine running, no matter how hard I pushed down on the door, the light never went off. When I closed the truck’s outside doors, after several minutes, the interior lights went off leaving the glovebox lamp still on. Then, finally, the glovebox lamp went off. It seemed to me that the lamp was being controlled through the other interior lights. If there is a glovebox on-off switch, I do not know where it is.
My first thought was to remove the glovebox. The service manual states that, to remove the upper glovebox, several parts of the dash have to first be removed. I could do that but what if that didn’t solve the problem? What if I broke part of the dash trying to remove the center bezel and the right side air outlet vent. The lower glovebox also had to be removed. After studying the situation, I decided to just create a tight seal where the light shines through. My solution was to add a soft rubber strip to the door’s bottom edge as well as along the area where the door rests when closed.
Home Depot sells a Frost King brand of self-sticking, silicone rubber weatherseal. It is #SS20BR (SKU #560920) for $17.87. It’s made for insulating around windows and doors. The color is listed as brown which worked well with my Mountain Brown interior. However, it is so very dark that it probably would work with a black interior as well. As you can see from the photos, I put one piece of rubber along the bottom of the box opening. I used a plastic trim stick and pulled back the padded panel between the upper and lower gloveboxes. You do not have to remove it completely, just pull back to create enough room to “sandwich” the rubber weatherstrip between the flocked black interior box and the padded panel. Since the rubber seal has self-stick tape on it, I positioned that so the sticky side faces the interior of the glovebox. However, snapping the padded panel back in place is what really holds the rubber in place.
For the lower edge of the glovebox door itself, I used a second piece of the silicone rubber. Because the door is only about 1/8” thick, I very carefully removed the sticky tape from the weatherstrip and cemented the strip in place. Silicone rubber is difficult to cement so I used some Permatex Black Silicone Adhesive Sealant I purchased from an Advanced Auto Store. A bead of adhesive just behind the lower edge of the door as well as a little adhesive on the lower edge secured the rubber weatherseal in place. Some masking tape front to back held everything in place until the adhesive sealant became firm in about 1-2 hours. After removing the tape, I left the glovebox open to fully cure until the next day. The door opens, closes and latches perfectly.
In my opinion, the end result looks almost factory. Absolutely no light shines through. With the glovebox door down, the rubber seal is hardly noticeable. With the door open, the seals really do not interfere with placing or removing objects from the glovebox. If you want to add this to your glovebox, it isn’t difficult. Just take your time, plan ahead and you can achieve similar results.
My first thought was to remove the glovebox. The service manual states that, to remove the upper glovebox, several parts of the dash have to first be removed. I could do that but what if that didn’t solve the problem? What if I broke part of the dash trying to remove the center bezel and the right side air outlet vent. The lower glovebox also had to be removed. After studying the situation, I decided to just create a tight seal where the light shines through. My solution was to add a soft rubber strip to the door’s bottom edge as well as along the area where the door rests when closed.
Home Depot sells a Frost King brand of self-sticking, silicone rubber weatherseal. It is #SS20BR (SKU #560920) for $17.87. It’s made for insulating around windows and doors. The color is listed as brown which worked well with my Mountain Brown interior. However, it is so very dark that it probably would work with a black interior as well. As you can see from the photos, I put one piece of rubber along the bottom of the box opening. I used a plastic trim stick and pulled back the padded panel between the upper and lower gloveboxes. You do not have to remove it completely, just pull back to create enough room to “sandwich” the rubber weatherstrip between the flocked black interior box and the padded panel. Since the rubber seal has self-stick tape on it, I positioned that so the sticky side faces the interior of the glovebox. However, snapping the padded panel back in place is what really holds the rubber in place.
For the lower edge of the glovebox door itself, I used a second piece of the silicone rubber. Because the door is only about 1/8” thick, I very carefully removed the sticky tape from the weatherstrip and cemented the strip in place. Silicone rubber is difficult to cement so I used some Permatex Black Silicone Adhesive Sealant I purchased from an Advanced Auto Store. A bead of adhesive just behind the lower edge of the door as well as a little adhesive on the lower edge secured the rubber weatherseal in place. Some masking tape front to back held everything in place until the adhesive sealant became firm in about 1-2 hours. After removing the tape, I left the glovebox open to fully cure until the next day. The door opens, closes and latches perfectly.
In my opinion, the end result looks almost factory. Absolutely no light shines through. With the glovebox door down, the rubber seal is hardly noticeable. With the door open, the seals really do not interfere with placing or removing objects from the glovebox. If you want to add this to your glovebox, it isn’t difficult. Just take your time, plan ahead and you can achieve similar results.
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