thixon
07-06-2010, 03:41 PM
Well,
I've been working on fitting up the body on the IIa, so I can then take it back off and do the body/paint work. Last night I had trouble with the driver side door.
After goofing with it for a few minutes, I notice that I needed to pull the entire door upwards for everything to align properly. Guess what? I couldn't move it up anywhere near the proper height. The cause of this just plain sucks!
I did a full lower rebuild on this bulkhead (door posts, footboxes, doghouse..). To do the job, I used the cutouts for the fender j-nuts to measure where to to cut and weld the new door posts in. I assumed the punch out for the door hinges would be properly aligned in relation to the location of the fender cutouts (duh!).
As it turns out, the driver side door hinge holes were punched about a half inch too low on the replacement door post. The fenders and passenger side doors align perfectly, but the driver door is too low. I am now faced with welding up the holes for the lower hinge, and then re-drillng in the correct place. The worst part? I've already primed and painted this bulkhead. Guess I'll be doing a little spot repair work. Glad I went with a single stage paint!
The lesson I seem to be missing time and time again is that I should never assume that the parts I buy to fix panels/body on any car are ever perfect. You'd think I'd of figured this out by now. I seem to remember this on anyone's car I work on, just not on anything I own. Go figure.
I've been working on fitting up the body on the IIa, so I can then take it back off and do the body/paint work. Last night I had trouble with the driver side door.
After goofing with it for a few minutes, I notice that I needed to pull the entire door upwards for everything to align properly. Guess what? I couldn't move it up anywhere near the proper height. The cause of this just plain sucks!
I did a full lower rebuild on this bulkhead (door posts, footboxes, doghouse..). To do the job, I used the cutouts for the fender j-nuts to measure where to to cut and weld the new door posts in. I assumed the punch out for the door hinges would be properly aligned in relation to the location of the fender cutouts (duh!).
As it turns out, the driver side door hinge holes were punched about a half inch too low on the replacement door post. The fenders and passenger side doors align perfectly, but the driver door is too low. I am now faced with welding up the holes for the lower hinge, and then re-drillng in the correct place. The worst part? I've already primed and painted this bulkhead. Guess I'll be doing a little spot repair work. Glad I went with a single stage paint!
The lesson I seem to be missing time and time again is that I should never assume that the parts I buy to fix panels/body on any car are ever perfect. You'd think I'd of figured this out by now. I seem to remember this on anyone's car I work on, just not on anything I own. Go figure.