The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop passenger side door won't line up!

I am having trouble with my passenger side door it barely clears the front fender and when it hits the strike plate its low and rubs the floor I've tried all different hinge settings and it is still low? Is there a secret to getting these doors straight

yes there's a secret, but nobody will tell
this is the 56? the TF doors are a PITA - if too close to the fender, the fender might be back a bit further than necessary - then if it's too low on the latch side, it will be too close to the fender at the bottom, which might be that the bottom hinge [inside the door] needs adjusting out and the top one in [also inside door] - the pillar side of the hinge mostly flushes up the face, but can have some influence too

confused? one way to shove things around is to loosen both hinges in the door slightly and close it while holding up on the handle, once it's shut and fitting passable, climb inside and tighten the hinge bolts - once you get it close that way, the striker parts can be adjusted to fine tune closing

the ideal is to have about 3/16 - 1/4" gap all around, but the dog leg doors were a problem even at the factory, and it's not unusual to see a truck where the doors seem a slightly different shape than the opening, ya just have to keep futzing until it works ... assuming the hinge pockets on the cab are in good shape

Bill

thanks for the tip about the hinge pockets being in good shape I measured and compared sides and the lower pocket seems to be abouts 3 eights of an inch in from the drivers side its about the only part I haven't rebuilt, so I'm off get a hinge plate hope that gets it

You might not believe this and I don't know anything about how your truck is put together or whether this will work for you but....My buddy drives a '36 Ford truck street rod. The passenger door never fit right. The top and bottom seams were very mismatched. His wife was afraid of the door popping open when they were on the road. You could see the door lift up as it was closing on the striker plate. We had messed with it several times with no luck. Then a friend told him the trick. On older cars and trucks the cab does not sit on the frame exactly. There are blocks of wood between the cab and frame. These "spacers" are used to adjust of all things the gaps in the doors. Think about it...if the spacers are wrong, missing or worn on your cab and someone has tighten the frame to cab bolts to get the sweaks out they may have tweaked your cab so the door doesn't fit right. Yeah, I know it sounds strange but I got a much better fit-up on the front door gaps on a '28 Dodge "shoebox" I worked on later.

I think for that to have much influence on the 55-59, the cab mounts would have to be in pretty bad shape - the real oldies had wood and rubber mountings and many had wood framed bodies - OTOH it is possible for the cab to get tweaked by a wreck, and I can attest it's also possible to tweak'em with the judicious use of a port-a-power and some 2x4's

Bill

Truck cabs are pretty easy to tweak because of the dimensions involved- there really isn't much front to back metal and anything from the mounts to the hood being out of adjustment will tweak the doors. That's why we need to weld in x-braces whenever we fix rusty spots.

Well, again I don't know your truck but you might try and peek under the cab at the mounting points for any kind of spacers. Then take at look at the service manuals at chevy.tocmp.com to see if anything is different. It's cheap and won't take much time.