The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Door Alignment

I have a 1950 3100 series 1/2 ton. It needs front cowl patches, rockers and a new floor in front of the seats. I have started to cut out the rot in the passenger front cowl area and now I have a question. The door hinges are tight on the bottom, and the top have a slight bit of play in them, but do not seem too bad. I reinstalled the door to check the fit around the door opening and with the lower inner and outer cowl removed the door sags by about 1/2" to clear the strike plate. You can pull the door up and latch it and then the beltline and gaps look pretty good, but I do not want to have to lift the door to close all the time.

My fear is that if I start to weld this up I will lose out on my chance to fix what is wrong. Any ideas? If I need to supply more info let me knwo. Thanks

Some way your going to have to weld some braces into place after you've lined up the door. The braces will hold the door opening until you get your panels welded. Keep checking your door for fit.

I agree with yakimabowtie.. I just got done with mine.. I rebuilt my hinges first before I started cutting panels out.. That took some sag out once I rebuilt them.. Also with the cowls taken out, the door pillars on mine seemed to flex some.. Just take lots of measurements and keep checking your door fit by rehanging them everytime you adjust something.. Just take your time.. Check the bottom of the door pillars also and make sure there not getting thin.. That will cause sagging too.. It took me 4 days of rechecking to get my driver door to fit properly.. I ended up adjusting my hinges and striker plate and tacking everything back and my door shuts good and lines up properly..

When you say adjust the hinges did you just move them in the hinge pocket? It seems that there is not much room for hinge movement on the pillar. When I tried to adjust the hinges to move the latch side of the door higher my gaps got really bad.

No there was not much movement in mine either on the pillar side.. I loosened the door side of the hinge and adjusted it up and down.. If I wanted to take out the sag I loosened the bottom door side bolts and picked up on it. Then If it gap was uneven I adjusted the top some on the door side. I really just experimented with mine and got a good understanding of what each adjustment done.. I also drilled 1/8 holes through the hinge on each side to use as reference marks before I removed the door when I started.. So if I adjusted them and it was worse I could line the holes back up and it would return to stock position.

Have you seen Woody's web site?

http://www.pbase.com/czechman/arightside&page=all

He has some good tips on door fitment.

I have set of lower door pillar patch panels you can have for the drivers side if you need them. I don't have any need for them and they are just laying around taking up room and collecting dust One is for the lower hinge pocket and one panel is for the lower rear of the door opening. They still have the sticker on them and plenty of dust.