Trunk/fender/door alignment, Body panels going back on Options

[type11969]

Slowly getting my 914 back together and I'm now in the process of making one good set of fenders out of 3x crappy sets, mounting the fenders, and aligning the fenders with the trunk lid and doors. First question, my driver's side door is really tight to the driver's side fender - but only when I have the fender cinched all the way down to the inner fender in the back.

Shown below is the gap with the fender secured in place (basically binding with the door):

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/i19.photobucket.com-1410-1415068318.1.jpg)

If I leave the fender unsecured in the back:

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/i19.photobucket.com-1410-1415068318.2.jpg)

I get a "workable" gap:

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/i19.photobucket.com-1410-1415068318.3.jpg)

Maybe there isn't a ton of visual difference, but there is a big difference in terms of feel. So, question is, can I somehow shift the driver's door forward? The gap at the front is large, definitely not equally distributed. Shifting the hinges around made no difference - seems like I really need to move the pivot forward but there does not seem to be a way to do that without bending metal.

I can probably force the gap to be wider by shimming the gap when finally welding the fender in, but that seems to just bow out the fender in the middle. Other ideas?


And the second question, trunk alignment. I installed the JWest pivots, aligning my trunk lid to my fenders and equalizing the gap. Everything looked pretty good until I installed the trunk latching pin and tail-lights. The trunk lip hits the pass side tail-light, popping up the pass side of the trunk lid:

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/i19.photobucket.com-1410-1415068318.4.jpg)

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/i19.photobucket.com-1410-1415068318.5.jpg)

On the driver's side, the latch pin seems to be the cause of it riding up so high, if I remove the pin/assembly, the lid seems to sit fine. Here is the gap with the pin assembly in place:

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/i19.photobucket.com-1410-1415068318.6.jpg)

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/i19.photobucket.com-1410-1415068318.7.jpg)

Note that on both sides, the trunk lid aligns well to the fender by the engine lid and that the rear of the trunk lid aligns well with the end of the fenders. How can I correct this gap? Grind the trunk lip where it is interfering and recess the pin assembly/latch? The latch pin is already as short as it can go. Seems like any changes I make to the trunk pivots will only mess up the alignment to the fenders by the engine lid and/or the trunk lip to fender alignment at the rear. Ideas?

I'm trying to mock up as much as I can now since this car is such a mashup of other cars - and perhaps that is what is doing me in. There does not seem to be much available movement in terms of fender positioning which seems to drive everything else. Oddly enough, the gaps around the pass side door are fine - but that is (of course) where I did all of the rust repair.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris

[r_towle]

Now Rick shows up to tell you how to do it right.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smiley_notworthy.gif)