Door fit problems - or worse. Options

[andrewb]

Hi - here are a few pics of my car which needs 'quite a lot' of work.



The immediate problem I'm trying to solve is this - the drivers side door gap - at the forward edge.



There is no adjustment that I can see (i.e. no shims on the hinge mount) which can only mean that the front wing (sorry, fender) is 'out'. As far as I can tell it is the original.

My questions are

1. Would it have left the factory like that ? I've read that tolerances were a bit slack by todays standards. The door gap on the drivers side is about 4mm more than on the passengers side. It hangs low by about 5mm when open but lines up perfectly when closed. There is no discernable play in the hinges. The door does shut with a liitle resistance but does not open and close as freely as the passenger side. Gaps on that side are a steady and even 2 to 3 mm front and back. Roll bar to windscreen frame dimensions are equal side to side within 1mm and do not change when the doors are open. The doors are the same size.

2. If it didn't leave the factory like that - what has caused it ? The car has had a light knock on the left front corner which I will show in my next post but the damage doesn't appear to extend any further back than where the inner wheel arch meets the bulkhead between the fuel tank and spare wheel well. The inner longs are completely shot both sides, the inner INNER longs are shot up to about 2" above the floor, the floors are fairly bad and the hell hole is good. I'll show all this with future pics.

3. Can I put it right and if so how ? Again - more pictures following will help you to decide.

Thanks in advance. The knowledge on this forum is priceless.

[realred914]

hard to say what is wrong, lot of things can cuase the door gap wrong.

i say get the car measured, on a rack if possible. need to see if car is crooked or not (colliiosn damage) or bent from rust (rockers gone) then see if it can be squared up. since you will be putting lots of time money and effort intot his restoration, i think it is highly important to determine how stright the car is now, before you spend more on it, then you will know what needs to be done.

if you were out in california, you would have a choice of better body shells, but since your car is probably pretty rare in teh UK, you may have to fix what you got, just make sure early on in the project you assure yourself the cars strightness with accurate measurements, then proceed to fix frm that knowledge.



best of luck!!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/aktion035.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/aktion035.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving-girl.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sawzall-smiley.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smash.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/welder.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/chowtime.gif)