I removed the door from the hinges to install new pins and bushings. I left the door hinges on the car. When I reinstalled the door, I have this big gap at the top and hardly no gap at the bottom. I had good alignment before. It lines up good back st the latch perfectly.
Or is it the fender I need to adjust? The body line is dead on.
What am I doing wrong ?
A spacer on the top? I dunno.
Perhaps the doors were previuosly adjusted for the worn hing, now the hing is fixed the door isnt in the right spot any more.
You may need to start from scratch and go thru the process of adjustments and alignment ?
What do the rest of the door gaps look like? If they are good you need to adjust the fender. Then you’ll need to adjust the hood.
To me the bottom needs a shim to bring it out a bit. It looks too tight
You have to do the alignment in steps. Use the factory shop manual, it specifies the correct gaps for each panel. Start with the doors, then the hood gets gapped to the cowl. Front fenders come last. The inner fenders can be easily bent up or down on the top edge. A shim at the front of the fender changes the door gap a lot. Fit was not great when the cars were new, sometimes metal work and / or bondo is needed to satisfy the perfectionist.
This is what I kept telling my self when I was doing my fitments. It was not all that perfect back when it was new. I used the factory gap measurements for a guide and adjustment to the best I could. Its always a pain since one thing will affect the other so its typically a balancing act to find a happy medium between parts.
Just as Royce said, to do it right, fender & hood also need to be readjusted as well to get a proper fit. Took us a whole day to each door when we were reassembling my Eliminator. NOT fun!!! But we got all the gaps perfect, better than factory.
Thank guys for the input.
Door line is perfect against the quarter panel and rocker.
It’s seems the PO may have compensated for the drooping door via the fender.
Rebuilding the hinges pins a bushings isn’t that hard. Why folks shy away from that. I don’t know.
Had the same issue when I did mine, had to readjust the top hinge a bit, since I believe it was readjusted at some point to compensate for the worn bushes.