The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop 1953 Door alignment - 2004 thread no help.

I have searched the archives and found only one thread that addresses my problem. The author was member "Wayne C". None of the links appear to exist anymore. And I saw no conclusion to the thread that Wayne C had solved his problem. Soooo here I am... The top of both doors and the leading edge of the doors at the cowl fit fine, but the door sticks out about 3/8" from the cab about where the door handle is and sticks a full 1/2" at the bottom of the door. It didn't change when I removed the striker plate. I have to slam the doors to get them to latch. The hinges are rebuilt and in good condition. I have installed new weatherstripping from Steele Rubber Co. I took pics so you can see what I am talking about. Has anyone else had this problem? Aside from heating the hinges with a torch and bending them to make the doors fit.

There is a process us shade tree body repair men used involving bending the door to align with the opening. I haven’t done it in 50+ years so I’ll let someone more familiar with the procedure explain it. It involves a well placed 2X4 and some hefty pushing.

One of our fellow ‘bolters 52Carl, had some pretty sound advice, so I will quote him from a previous post.

“A good tip that I have learned for adjusting doors is to completely remove the striker. It just gets in the way. Once the door is adjusted to the opening with the belt line aligned, the striker will usually be easy to install and adjust.”

That will also allow you to find out if the new weatherstripping is holding the door out.

Your doors look to be aligned correctly. The lines match and the same space is present from top to bottom. Which of the Steele products did you use? There is an 11/16" thick weatherstrip which won't work. It is too thick. Sorry to sound blunt, but 7/16" is about right and anything thicker than 1/2" can become exponentially harder to close the thicker it is. I went down this same road about a year and a half ago...

Jon G, I don't remember what size weatherstripping I ordered. I will have to measure it. However I was thinking along that line also. When I push the door to it has some spongy bounce to it. I brought the leading edge (closest to the cowl) out as far is I could which helped. It's a pain to remove, but it looks like I need to strip it all off and start over with softer, thinner weatherstripping. I will let you know if it works. Thanks.

There is a man at The Filling Station...name is Steve. Good guy. He and I last year discovered Steele was running some weatherstrip through an extrusion die which was too small and Steve got them to correct it. If you talk to him, tell him I said hi. He'll remember working on this, probably. What they were running was 3/8" thick and that won't quite do it. What Steele calls 1/2 is really 7/16, but it works. Here it is:

https://store.fillingstation.com/detail/70-331/Chevrolet_194755_TRUCK_DOOR_EDGE_SEAL_THIN_12.html

If you have a truck that hasn't been abused or which hasn't suffered a lot of damage and your doors still fit correctly (from what I can see yours do), then you need the thinner seal product. Anything around 11/16" is just too thick unless your doors are basically not in very good nick. And even then they'll stand proudly away from the cab if the rubber is too thick. In 1978 I bought from GM the actual weatherstrip for the 1952 Chevy 1/2 ton truck. It was 1/2 inch, but it wasn't really very soft. I asked the guys at Steakley Chevy about it (the dealership) and they said "well, that's been here in our back room for about 20 years or so. Probably lost some of the springiness sitting there waiting for a buyer, but it ought to be ok." It worked and it sealed those doors up tighter than Scrooge's wallet, but I always felt it could have been a bit less thick. GM no longer carries that part. Two years ago I contacted them (home office) and a nice lady spent probably 30 minutes looking for part numbers that might cross-reference. At one point in the 80s, GM had a program to sell certain after-market parts which were good enough to qualify as genuine GM replacement parts (Steele made some of them), but that program is gone now. Anyhow she and I never could find anything similar, so I tried the thicker stuff and absolutely could not make it work any way going. It is the stuff all these vendors (except for The Filling Station) are selling. Good luck.

Today I removed the striker plate and realigned the passenger door. The door aligned to the door opening perfect. However it would still not close flush to the cab, at the latch side. I removed the door, removed all the weatherstripping, reinstalled and realigned the door. Same problem. The only thing that changed was with the striker plate on, the door latched without having to slam it. But it still protruded out from the door 1/4" at the latch to 5/8" at the bottom. So the thinner weatherstripping may help as far as not having to slam the door to latch it, but it doesn't fix the warpage. What I don't understand is why it fits flush to the cab on the cowl side of the door, but not at the latch side, and both doors the same. I have to buy new weatherstripping now anyway so I will be sure to purchase the 7/16".

You might not have the striker adjusted properly. Here's where it gets weird.
Logic would dictate that you would need to move the striker inboard to make the door close tighter.

You may actually have the striker too far inboard and it is catching on the safety latch and not the primary latch. This has happened to me more that once.
Try moving the striker outboard quite a bit to see if it latches on the primary latch. Once it does, then you can adjust it inboard to the proper position.
Carlton your doorman.

One other thing I've seen: the lower weatherstrip piece...the one that mounts on the body and is held in place with the strip, sometimes called the cab step weatherstrip. If that is new, it will cause the lower part of the door to stick out until it has been there for a while. What we get today is stiffer than it should be.

Jon, fortunately I have not installed those strips yet. However you are correct, they are very stiff. As far out as the door protrudes from the cab, it may not even come in contact with this strip.

I couldn't help notice your signiture. I also have a '59 235 in my '53. Full flow oiler instead of the dippers and babbit rods. I haven't been able to find the correct T5 yet.

Thank you Carlton. I will give that a try, although there isn't much adjustment to the striker plate. I may have to try to notch the holes.

Joe, the correct T5 depends on what ratio of rear end you'll use. Please send a PM or email me at [email protected] if you want more info.

If your striker is set so far inboard that it is only latching on the safety latch, you should have enough play to move it out to catch the primary latch.