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.

[jmill]

It sounds like you were eyeballing my thread. If not check it out in my sig. Be very careful before you start pulling the car around. I made some careful measurements and even a jig before I did my pulls. I also pulled at an angle opposite of the impact. You'll see I have 3 holes drilled in the bracket mounted on the suspesion point. I did that so I could adjust the angle of the mounting point as I pulled down. If yours is just bent you might just use a long bar with a plate welded to it that can pick up the suspension point. You could lift on the bar to correct the angle.

[andrewb]

It sounds like you were eyeballing my thread. If not check it out in my sig. Be very careful before you start pulling the car around. I made some careful measurements and even a jig before I did my pulls.

I am building a jig largely because of your thread. Similar to this one shown in Jeff Hails thread



The problem I have is that I can only build it using the passenger side as a guide (assuming that is 'good') and then measuring that and reflecting it to create the drivers side. I think I need to create some sort of datum line down the middle to check that the passenger side is giving me good data. I'm starting to think that the whole front is pushed over to one side slightly.

Following advice from you and others I will do the longs first. That was my original plan but then I started looking at the door gap and was worried that the door would be harder to fix once I'd stiffened up the shell by doing the longs. Now I see how the door is mounted I realise that won't change and it has to be something to do with the front wing and/or the front end.

Thanks again for all the advice - that's the great thing about 'world' - there are so many people who have actually been there, done that so you know the advice is based on experience.