Vert body flex when jacking car up?

[jwms]

Starting a new thread on this subject...

When I jack my 79 Vert at the jack point, the door will not open on the raised side. It's as if the body flexes and tightens the door frame against the door. My car is solid...no rust anywhere and it is not driven in wet weather.
Anyone else have this issue? Thoughts?
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'72 Westy Camper Pop-Top
'72 Westy Camper Tin-Top
'79 Tri Color Black 'Vert-Fuel Injected

[Boble]

This is my car when I bought it - beautiful, no rust:

When jacking it up one day, the side flexed, and the door couldn't open. This is how it turned out to be after cutting away the plates:

I really hope this is not the case with yours, in my case it ended up in a full resto. However, you definitely have a serious structural issue. Something is not right, the door should not jam.

The vert has stiffening beams on each side. VW did not coat them on the inside, it's just bare metal. They may very well be rusted even they look good from the outside.

[Cusser]

I've found the stock jack "holes" are not very strong on my own two VWs (one a '71 Convertible), and they are in Arizona, no rust. I don't use those locations any longer.
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1970 VW (owned since 1972) and 1971 VW Convertible (owned since 1976), second owner of each. The '71 now has the 1835 engine, swapped from the '70. Second owner of each. 1988 Mazda B2200 truck, 1998 Frontier, 2014 Yukon, 2004 Frontier King Cab. All manual transmission except for the Yukon. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335294 http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335297

[awreed]

While working on a friends 78 triple white vert last week I experienced this exact same thing- door on the jacked side wouldn't close as snugly as usual. Once lowered back down to the ground, the issue resolved itself. I was using a hand crank VW jack (in the jack hole) and the body flexed. I've been all over, inside, outside this car and there isn't a spec of rust I've found. It's been resprayed, but it's basically a show car that doesn't see the outside more than a few times a year.

I don't know if this is normal for late model verts, but this was just my experience.


Not sure if it's germane, but I ran into this body flex 'problem' on another friends Toyota Tacoma when he drove the truck over a retaining wall and high centered. Different type of car, different year, etc, but I'm guessing that most cars are designed with some amount of flex in the body.

I would verify one more time very thoroughly that you don't have any serious structural issues, and then once satisfied that the car is solid, ignore it and don't open the doors when jacking the car up.

[airschooled]

The arched roof of an automobile is so important for structural rigidity, that VW (and probably every other convertible maker) added significant chassis reinforcement elements to the convertible bugs to combat this. At some point though, it will be like pushing a rope; the flex will be there.

Because of this, I went off on a tire shop employee for backing ours off a lift at an angle with the driver door open one time. I feel bad now, but at the time I really thought it was common knowledge NOT to do that to a convertible- the doors are an important piece of crash safety and are heftier than sedan doors in build and security too.

Robbie
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[williamM]

X2- they were like that from new- first one I put on the lift with the doors open -- yikes thought I broke it, but it was fine after putting back on it's wheels and closing the doors.
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some days I get up and just sit and think. Some days I just sit.

opinion untempered by fact is ignorance.

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[Ace]

Vert bugs and vert ghias rust from inside out. There is no paint, or any moisture protection from the factory in there.

[VWCOOL]

Yes. Normal.

Most cars - especially convertibles - will flex when jacked at one point as they are (not surprisingly!) designed to carry the weight on all four wheels

Rusty cars will flex more due to lack of strength, but flexing is NOT in itself a symptom of rust

Now that you have nothing to worry about, go drop the roof and enjoy it!