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Well what do you want to know about the Australians? One.....they are very good at cricket and most sports come to that.....two they make screen rubbers that fit our HB's badly! I suppose that is a little harsh as one.....they're not technically for our HB's, they are for the LC Torano, an antipodean genetic experiment which, in my opinion, isn't quite as beautiful as the HB, (I don't like the backend).....and two we can't make them in England anymore as we are a service industry nation now and can't make anything unless there's a huge profit in it, so well done Australia.
I bought some Australian rubbers, (sounds a bit iffy doesn't it), from a company called 'Scots Old Rubber', (sounds even worse), over the 'tinternet', as it was much cheaper than buying from sources in this country. I ordered direct from Scot himself; a front and rear screen rubber, a nearside door rubber, (a long story but I thought I'd ordered both sides at the time) and a boot rubber. This lot came to about £225 in total and took four weeks to get to me. When it arrived our wonderful Government wouldn't let me have it unless I handed over another £22 import duty. Long live taxation! So a total of approximately £247 was spent but, that was against the cost of £220 for just the front and rear screen rubbers being sold at Billing last year.
From what I now know, I can honestly say that the door rubbers fitted well, all the clips lined up nicely and it was the perfect size. The screen rubbers sort of fit apart from the top corners which are a little short. But the boot rubber is completely different and would be extremely difficult to make fit, even for a professional, which I'm not! (It fits onto the boot itself rather than the body edge. It did come with instructions though).
The door rubber was put on one evening and caused no problems even for me, which goes to show how easy it was. I ordered the drivers side again from Australia and this time it came within two weeks and I didn't have to pay any duty this time. (Scots Old Rubber wrote something on the front of the box this time, but I forgot what it was).
Now for the screen rubbers. I put the rubbers onto the screens a week or so before I fitted the screens into the car. A friend of my sons works for a screen company and said if you have time to do this it helps it form to the shape. Well the old screens just pushed out without any trouble and I then fitted the headlining properly. I did the rear screen first for no reason in particular. It was a tight fit but eventually I got it in. The front was the same, tight but in it went. The problem was the top corners. These had a small gap of about 5mm on them. What I needed was to push the corners of the rubbers out slightly to fill the gap. I decided to put something along the edge of the screen in the top corners to push the rubber out. From the screens I'd taken out, I took a shape template of the corners, (you didn't realise I was this clever did you?) and made an insert from metal. I tried a few different shapes before deciding on t   he one I thought worked best. Then Spot reminded me that metal rusts so another rethink was needed. (not so clever). I couldn't find any thick strong plastic but I did have some stainless steal, so used that for the inserts. The first small picture shows, (badly), that I had made it to small. The second was better but to wide and of course made of metal. The third one was made of stainless, slightly narrower and did push the rubbers out the 5mm required. The pictures below show the gap in the first two and no gap in the lower two. (This was the front screen).
 
It took a few attempts but eventually I managed to slide the insert under the rubber and push the insert along the edge of the screen. It really did work and filled the 5mm gap nicely. In the next picture the edge of the stainless stee l has been marked by a red line, not a great picture as my hand is in the way as well, but it will give you an idea. I used an old rounded screwdriver to push the metal between the screen and the rubber then rested it on the edge of the screen glass. With the screwdriver out of the way I then pushed down on the rubber from above to make sure it stayed in place.
What you can notice now is in the last picture below, the internal edge of the rubber shows slightly now that the external edge has been pushed back.
 
Finally I've run a layer of gutter sealant under the rubber, then put the chrome looking insert moulding strip into place. The strip didn't push the rubber out an extra little bit as I'd hoped it would, but it looks okay.
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