Door sizes

[steff]

Okay hoping someone can help on this one.

My 71 HC 2 door has a badly dented n/s door. Replacement door came from a later 77ish HC, doing a final fit before full respray have discovered the new door is nearly 10 mm shorter (when measured along the swage line) than the old one.

panel gaps are just a tad noticable!

Anyone come across this before and how did you sort it?

Cheers

Steff
HC496

[dann01]

10mm is nothing... You should see the gaps on Darth.

Dan

[droopsnoot]

Whew, that makes me feel better. I've been worried about the door fit on my Sportshatch rebuild as there's very little gap on the bottom rear corner, had already found that a different door fitted better than the first one I tried. Nice to know they can be around 10mm different, though that sounds a lot even for seventies pressings.

As for making it better, there's only a couple of things you can do - alter the rear quarter panel to meet it, or alter the door. Probably easier to alter the door by welding a thin strip along the edge and slowly filing it down to give a good gap, then blend in and paint the door. You could do it with filler, but the edge of the door leads to a much greater chance of it chipping off if there's no structure behind it. You could fill the edge of the quarter panel, but that would be quite a lot of filler to make it look decent when the door is open.

One seventies bodge I heard of is to fit and close the door, bung a load of filler in the gap, then get a blade or thin screwdriver and run along where you want the door gap. When it's all gone off, you can sand smooth and paint - instant door gap.

[steff]

Thanks Guys

Don't fancy a bug gap as all that will happen is the door rubber won't keep out the water and I will back welding the floor in no time. I still have the original door so might consider removing the skin from the good door and putting on the frame of the original one. A lot of work!

Steff
HC496

[escort89]

Have you tried to repair the door you have? I had one that was rippled but managed to get it straightened...