Door gaps are not even any more!, Now what??? Options

[FourBlades]

I was test fitting my doors before painting them and noticed this:

Driver side.



Passenger side.

[FourBlades]

Mark: I did a fair amount of seam welding on mine. Maybe 25% of the tops
and less of the bottoms. I also did the seam welding in a short time. Part of
the problem is that I had finally learned to make a really pretty seam weld
so I think I just went overboard.

The top still fits pretty well. It takes a little effort to lock the front latches.
I am going to check it again to see if the windshield frame is bending. Man
worrying about that is going to keep me from sleeping at all at work today...

How do you use a porta power to stretch a car body?

Pete: I am sure that is the thread I was reading. How did your guy know
where to jack up your car? I wonder if your car naturally stretches when
on jack stands because of the weight overhanging the front and rear jack
stand points? Maybe you need that stretch to counter act the shrinkage?

It would be nice to get this down to a repeatable science, for the sake of
future 914s...

John

[horizontally-opposed]

How did your guy know
where to jack up your car? I wonder if your car naturally stretches when
on jack stands because of the weight overhanging the front and rear jack
stand points? Maybe you need that stretch to counter act the shrinkage?

Experimentation + years and years of working with metal.

He welded it cold and was super mindful of the potential for problems others had experienced -- and still got shrinkage. Fortunately, he knew what he was doing and was able to fix the problem. Both doors fit up nicely and close perfectly. The final test will be the windows...

pete

[Wes V]

I think something to think about would be to do one side at a time.

Put jack stands at the front and rear of the door opening.

Put a floor jack at the front so it just barely supports the front weight.

Put a floor jack at the rear so that it also barely supports the weight. Then lower it slightly.

Remove the rubber seal on the door, close the door and measure the gaps. That way you could close the door while doing the welding to see how stuff is moving around.

My guess is that while welding and the top of the long is hot, the rear of the car would sag downward and touch the floor jack you have there. Don't raise the jack!!!!

As the long cools, the rear would raise again, off of the jack.

The weight of the cantilevered rear section should limit how much the top of the long shrinks.

What I'm getting at is that you should maybe "preload" the longitudinal.

Adding a brace, although helpfull wouldn't preload the section (unless you screwed it outward real tight) and as a result, when you remove the brace, it would spring back and close the top gap.

Think about this; when a frame shop is trying to get a frame straight, they pull (or push) it past the point where they want it to be.

Of course, this is just me talking out the side of my mouth. I've yet to weld in an Engman.

Wes