The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Doors what is preferred source for door patch panels

I am going to be repairing the typical rust at the bottom of both my doors (1950 - 3600) and wondering if there is a preferred source for patch panels. I know from previous panels that I bought for the cab that patch panel fits can be a challenge and would like to start with the best fitting panels.

Ouch, that's pretty ugly.

As far as the inside panel, I got mine from Jim Carter and they fit pretty well. The pic is before trimming. You may need a little more metal, but you can just use flat sheets for that.

I can't advise on the lower outside door skin, as mine weren't bad.

I would use the patch on the inside as you plan to do.

On the lower outside panel, I would recommend simply reskinning the door. I attempted the lower surgery and it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked. It was hard to planish the welds, hard to control warpage, hard to line up, etc. After my attempts (yes, plural), I decided to buy a complete skin panel. It was way easier to finish and I am glad I did. If I could go back and get that time back, I would.

Find you some better doors. Since both the inside and outside panels are toast, it will be very difficult to get each panel in the right position. If you had anything at all left of either the inside or outside panel you could make the repair pretty easy as long as you are a master sheet metal welder. These doors have no stability to them whatsoever. A hot summer day will warp them.

I agree to find better doors. Unfortunately, I could not find the door skins for your truck(as Fox suggested), only the lower patch panels . If you do decide to fix what you have, there are two different patch panels for the inside. A short one that is about 2” wide (the type Kevin was talking about) and another style that replaces the lower 4” of the inside door panel. Using this style you may be able to locate the panel with some accuracy as it includes the rounded corners. Once the inner door panel is properly located, the outer patch panel would be much easier to locate. I found them in the Truck & Car Shop catalogue on page 68. You can download the catalogue on line.

https://issuu.com/truckandcarshop/docs/ts_47-59_13_web

Looks like Chevs of the Forties carries them too. https://www.chevsofthe40s.com/detai...r_Bottom_Left_Side_Superior_Quality.html

The lower outer partial skin might be a good opportunity to use some panel bond to eliminate the bulk of the welding. Might be one instance where I'd consider a lap type joint.

Thanks for all the input. The patch panels appear to range from 4" - 5 1/2" for inside and 10" - 15" for the outside depending on the source.

I had hopes of patching these rather than finding alternative doors but before I jump in and order the panels I will post a listing in the swap area to see if I can scare up alternative doors in better condition.

Regardless I plan to rebuild the hinges and replace all of the seals/wipers related involved and given that my glass is okay I may be able to find doors that will allow mix and matching of parts to get a better outcome than doing the patch panels.

The passenger door is not as bad with the outside skin intact, at least generally.

There are replacement doors (new) available from the vendors but I don't know about the quality. I have found a few potential options for used replacments but nothing that I have connected with the sellers yet.

That passenger door is pretty thin on the outer skin as well, with quite a few rust-thru holes, but at least the form is intact. It could probably be repaired without a ton of effort, assuming the patch panels are a reasonable fit.

Thanks Kevin, that was my thought but I will continue to look for a set of replacement doors before I commit to trying to repair either/both of these.

I looked at a set of doors that seem pretty good but then determined that they are for the later style with a vent window rather than a single window. The outside door handle also also appear to be different.

I have seen discussion here about conversion of doors from single window to add the vent (hard to do) but not the reverse - deleting the vent window to use a single window. Other than the obvious need to remove the metal that bars the window opening at the vent window position would anything else prevent installation of the single glass window regulator and glass?

The latches and strikers are different and not easy to change. Best stick to finding the correct doors.

Thanks, that what I assumed but didn't want to make incorrect assumptions.

A lot of door are listed as fitting 1949 - 1955 (maybe its 56?) but I think to actually get the correct doors I am limited to 1949-1951.

Lap joints will have two layers of metal on one side of the joint and one on the other. The problem you will have is that two layers of metal is slower to heat up and expand, and slower to cool down and contract when the vehicle is exposed to heat from sitting in the sun. Given enough heating and cooling cycles (about a year or two normally does the trick) and the differing expansion rates of one layer of metal vs. two will show a ghost line exactly where the seam is located. For evidence of this effect, look at the reflection in this green tailgate in this YouTube video, it shows a line towards the bottom exactly where the seam is located.

'47-'51 doors will fit and latch correctly on your '49/'50 truck. If you want to use your existing door guts on the replacement doors, you need to stick to '49 or '50.
'47-'48 doors use push-to-open inner door handles. I am not sure if you can simply use your '40/'50 door handle guts on a '47-'48 door to make it a pull-to-open. Probably is my bet.
'51 will have the vent window. different guts.

52Carl, thanks for the clarrification. So 49-50 it is, although that further restricts the potential of finding doors at least I know what I need now.

MPandC, thanks - I had not thought about the the two layers creating that specific problem. The good news in this case is if I do end up repairing, and use a lap joint it will be close to the bottom and hard to get a straight on view given the curvature of the outside door panel.

I decided to bit the bullet and ordered patch panels for my existing doors. I believe the passenger side may not be too bad and may not have needed to order the outer skin panel so I will tackle that one first. The driver's side door is going to be more challenging so if I go down in flames I may still be looking for a replacement driver's side door.

I started working on the right door (better of the two) and removed a portion of the bottom inner panel and a corner of the outside panel as seen the in the attached pictures.

The outer panel lip that is folded over the inner panel is missing for the entire length of the door with some of it remaining on the vertical edge remaining, The outer panel remaining seem solid. I assume that the folded over portion of the outer panel being gone is pretty common but wondering what others have done to secure the bottom edge of the inner panel.

Unfortunately my order for the patch panels was not filled correctly so I received 2 left inner door panels and no right inner door panel. I assume the vendor will correct the problem but it will delay any further work on the right door. I was hoping to use the experience on the right door before i started on the left door (much worse condition) but I am probably going to jump in and see how it goes.

When I replaced my lower inner door panels, I had similar rust out on the folded portion of the outer panel, but not nearly as bad as yours. I secured the two panels together where there wasn't a folded portion with a spot weld, then used filler to dress up the folded lower edge of the door. Normally there would be three layers of sheet metal there, outer panel, inner panel and the folded outer panel. I don't think there was any welding done at the factory there. They were spot welded thru all three layers now that I think about it.

The inner panels I used were universal, as they didn't include the front or back edge of the door. Those areas on my doors were still solid. It's a shame that the vendor sent you the wrong panel. They should fix the problem for you at not cost if they're a good vendor. But having to wait to get the correct part still sucks. Call them up and see if they'll ship the correct one out right away to reduce the delay.

Thanks Kevin. I anticipate plug welding the new inner panel to the existing outer panel on the inside as I do not have a spot welder.

Given that I will be waiting for the correct inner panel (and maybe regardless) I plan to fit the portion of the outer panel that I need to replace while I have access to both sides of the weld joint.

Looking back at my pictures, I think I plug welded there. I do have a spot welder, but don't recall using it on the doors.

Good plan on doing the outer panel first. Gives you better access for planishing the weld dots at the joint. That access hole is pretty small. I nearly got my arm stuck in there when I was installing sound deadener on the outer panel of my doors.

New outer panel welded in place. Still need to do some additional work but at least it looks pretty good so far.

The vendor agreed to ship me the correct inner panel and a shipping label to return the incorrect one, there inventory was shelved incorrectly so hopefully no one else got caught up in the problem before it was corrected.

Inner panel in place but overall door still requires more work. Decided to hit it with some primer to help identify the areas that need work.

Looks good to my eyes! Now you need to see how they fit in the door holes. If they do, you have accomplished something admirable, considering the condition of the door you started with.

This one wasn't as bad as the driver's side will be, at least most of the outside bottom remained intack. I am fairly confident that I didn't alter the front or back areas that interact with the cab opening but checking the fit is never a bad idea.

Driver's side inner and out patch panels in place. Still some work to do but making progress. I did a preliminary fit check and the hinge side outer panel patch appears to be further out than it should to align with the cowl so I may need to tweak that area.

Looks good.

One comment: I probably would have used the entire outer panel on the first door you did, considering that the bottom edge was a bit rough, rather than just one end of it. But I didn't see first hand how much rust was on the inside. Hopefully you won't wind up with a pinhole rusting through on the part you didn't replace.

In hind sight I probably should have done the outer panel on the passenger side. I may still go back and redo that before all is said and done. The driver's side outside panel replacement was not as challenging as I thought it would be.