At a local club picnic, I was asking one of the vets about my door issues, and he thinks it is likely a bad quarter repair. The door itself also looks off to me and there are putty worms under the center crease below the door handle that I noticed when working on my windows, so it may be a combination issue. The driver fender was replaced at some point, and the A pillar may also have been affected, but I don’t have any history to know what, or how many times these panels were worked.
The door measures 47 1/2" across the top crease, 53" along the middle descending crease, and 49 5/8 along the bottom. Can someone with a good door confirm these are correct? I’m hoping it is a bad skin/door repair and not the quarter, but I think my friend is probably right and the jam was reworked. I also think some of the fitment may be attributable to hinges, but if I can confirm the door is bad, I’ll rebuild/replace those when I find a replacement.
Knight 717, from the photos provided it appears to be an issue with the Qtr. Pnl. At some point the qtr was replaced without making pulls first or poor repairs left the qtr short of its proper placement. You will likely have additional adjustments needed to the door and fender alignment after the quarter is corrected. Note the rocker pnl and qtr pnl must be correct in order to establish proper sealing surfaces against door opening. Hope that helps…
The door looks like it may be a little low at the front. How’s the gap on the lower edge of the door? With out more pictures I can’t tell if the quarter panel is also a problem, But Carguy53 thinks it is, so I will not say it isn’t.
I had a friend who restored a 69 Convertible, he could not get the drivers door to line up like yours. He ended up replacing it.
Thank you for the time and thought. I will pull the back seat and inner trim and see what if any decent angles I can view the panel from the other side. The wheel well looks to be intact, and from inside the trunk it all looks original so I am wondering if the door was hit back near the latch and that the front half of the quarter was poorly repaired. There is a ripple in the A pillar as well, so something pretty dramatic appears to have happened. I’ll upload more pictures when I get it apart.
The fender gap is definitely larger at the top, but the fender top edge is a bit low at the windshield trim, so it’s could be warped or simply misaligned. I’m going to focus on trying to figure out if the C pillar/door latch pin area is off first, but I may have a poorly repaired quarter, bad door and bad fender to boot! As noted to Carguy, I’ll post more pictures when I’ve done some tear down. Thanks as always for your thoughts.
I’m not trying to be the wet rag here, but the door gaps (in the pictures) appear to be smaller at the front bottom and rear bottom. This could be that the rocker is tweaked (bowed up) a little.
No bad ideas here. I started out looking for advice and expecting it to be a complex series of issues. I was recommended to a shop with a frame jig here in the DFW area, but they no longer provide the service and I haven’t found another that will touch a vintage unibody, so I am stuck diagnosing this way for now.
I’ll pull the door sill plate when I get to tearing out the interior quarter panel trim and take a look at both. We’re currently selling our house and buying one with a free standing shop, so it will probably be late April before I get around to it.
Would you mind posting a picture that shows all the door? I’d like to see how the bottom gaps looks. Also, how does the door close? IE, easy, hard, need to lift it up ect. All this can help when we can not drop over and look at it.
Good luck with the move, having your own shop to work in is fantastic. I love having mine.
