by droopsnoot » Wed Jun 20, 2012 10:01 am
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.