Door Fit Issue

[nreslifer]

When we put the door on this week it did fit but was close where the door opening starts to curve down the front (angled area).Put the door rubber in closed the door to give the rubber a chance to seat and compress it over a couple of days.Now the door is hitting that tight area now,any suggestions how make adjustments to correct this.We put the door on the other side it fit up great?

[nreslifer]

Guess I'll post some photos of the progress

[Digger89L]

Anything you do will have an effect on how the door fits elsewhere, but I'd try a thin shim behind where the upper door hinge bolts to the body. Something only as thick a piece of body sheet metal (or two layers?) may be enough to correct it. BTW ...really nice work!!!
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"If you can't fix it with pop rivets, crazy glue and duct tape, or hold it together with zip ties, velcro or magnets, it REALLY is broken."

[EVfun]

That drivers door fit issue is pretty common in '61 to '64 sedans. I think the different flat door stops where slightly longer and as the rubber pad thins it allows the hinges to bottom out when the door is fully opened. This twists the hinges forward and moves the door forward. I shimmed a Bug with that problem years ago. I think the better answer would be to bolt a flat piece of steel onto the body in place of the door hinge and then pull back on that to move the inner structure back where it should be.
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[57BLITZ]

A couple things . . .

First, I think that you are smart enough to NOT attempt to align the door(s) while the car is on the lift, CORRECT?

Second, you should work on getting the proper gap BEFORE you install the latch striker and before you install the door seal.

Third, you might need to shim the body mounting points to correct, possibly adding to the shim/rubber pad on top of the beam . . . best done BEFORE you try bending the door hinges/hinge pillar.

Look here to see how a Pro does it . . . http://www.hotvws.com/content.php?contentID=73
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Jesucristo es mi Señor y Salvador!

[Digger89L]

VERY good link, and excellent tutorial. I didn't see it mentioned in that particular part of the article, but I think it goes without saying that you wouldn't want to do this 'body twisting' bit with the window (side quarters, front and rear windshields) installed. At least, I wouldn't ....unless I had spare glass around.
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"If you can't fix it with pop rivets, crazy glue and duct tape, or hold it together with zip ties, velcro or magnets, it REALLY is broken."

[nreslifer]

Thank you for the different ideas,going down to work on it tomarrow night to work on it the other guy working with me is pretty inventive.I'll let everyone know how we make out with the problem.

[EVfun]

One thing i'd look at is the door jam dimensions. Two dowels could be cut to the length so they just fit between the upper hinge (to the outer screw head) and the rear door jam and the lower hinge and the rear door jam on the right side. Then you could use these to check the measurements on the left side. It doesn't tell why its different but tells you IF its different.
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[nreslifer]

Update
Last night we put a triangle piece of wood in the bottom back corner of doorway and shaped another piece to fit the curved corner at the top of the other side of the door opening.Put tape under where we placed the wood blocks,using a porta jack carefully pushed on the corner.Did a little at a time and checked it taking our time didn't take a picture yet but paint wasn't damaged.Only thing that got messed up was the ram leaked some oil on the carpet but I'll clean it up.This should be the last hurdle now to getting it finished finally.