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.

[andrewb]

This is the evidence of the damage at the front.



As you can see there is no significant damage to the front valance ( although there has been a lot of subsequent corrosion outboard of the bumper mount) but the suspension mounting bolts on the right hand side of the picture (LHS of car) are almost vertical rather than angled. Quite an unusual impact would you say ? I bought the car in this condition so I don't know what caused it.

Next shot is inside the wheelarch - again note the suspension mounting bolts in the circle.





There are very slight creases in between the pairs of black lines, a few even smaller ripples upward and forward of those but nothing at all aft of those areas. The four mountings for the steering rack bracket appear to be square, true and equal side to side, front to back and diagonally.

So the question is - is that impact related to this