Preliminary Fit

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Major System Category: Body (Door)
Task: Test fit the door
Parts: Door
Prerequisite Tasks:
Additional Costs:
Time Requirement: 3 hours
Date Started: November 08, 2012
Date Completed:  November 10, 2012

There is a lot of things happening with doors. There are multiple systems (both mechanical and power) taking place in the door. The doors are fairly light (prior to installing all the hardware), so they are easy to move around to get an idea of how the doors fit on the car,

This is GTM #402 coming off the truck. You can see the tape along the door edges holding the door in place. When this happens, the leading edge of the door (inside the front cove of the body shell) is right up against the hinges that are part of the chassis. There is no way the hinges installed on the door can be that close.

When the car arrives, the doors are taped in place. This is deceptive. When the car is shipped the doors are pushed past the hinge points on the chassis. This makes it seem like the doors are already fitted in place. Reality is much different. The rear edge of the door is over sized and needs to be trimmed.

This is second photo of the tape used to hold the doors on for shipping.  When actually fitting takes place, some material will need to be sanded off the rear edge of the door.

Note: Hold off trimming any part of the door until the hinge is installed on the door and you have preliminary mount on the chassis.

The hinges attached to the chassis right above the puppy's head.

The other item I anticipated was that the upper and lower hinges for the door match the alignment of the hinges on the chassis. When the door hinges are properly aligned, the lower hinge is canted further away from the door than the upper. This allows the bottom of the door to be canted at angle closer to the body shell. I didn't understand this right away and ended up with an initial fit running a huge gap along the bottom of the door.

These are chassis hinges with the body shell installed. The door hinge fits on top of these hinges and you drive a hinge pin through. The chassis hinges are in vertical alignment. This is much different from the Corvette door set up, where there is much more room to work and the hinge pieces are much easier to access. This really is a two person job. Or a one person job with a little bit of luck.

Note: The lower hinge mounts closer to the chassis than the upper hinge. This supports way the door rests inside the body shell (i.e. the lower part of the door angles outwards and upwards to the top of the door).

Close up of the bushing. These are made of brass or some similar soft metal.  They will  rip apart  on you if you don't get the door in place just right. Fortunately, you can order extras from Amazon.

I managed to wreck a pair of hinge bushings. The Dorman 38377 part is a suitable replacement for these bushings.