The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Doors Passenger door does not fit opening....ugh

How in world did that happen? I did not notice or can't remember how the door fit upon disassembly. I have replace rear (lower) cab corner, front inner and inner to outer metal and bottom of outer cowl panel. But, I never disturbed hinge post to rocker panel connection. I tested fitted the door in the opening and the door and opening dimensions are virtually identical.

So, it seems I have some distortion in the cab. Too late to fix now (nor would I know how). So, I have to fit the door to the opening. My plan is to grind both door edges back approximately 1/8" then weld back together. I am unsure what will happen the door skin during this process. Suggestions? Should I spot weld the skin to the inner door before grinding down the edges (which will separate the skin and skin fold).
The door needs extensive rust repair anyway.

Any other suggestions. Incidentally, the drivers side door fit well.

Sounds like your on the right track, I might suggest "pushing" the posts apart? If you only need an 1/4" and don't do any damage to the cab corner or hinge pillar.

I would be afraid that pushing on the posts would disrupt and ruin (buckle) the sheet metal ahead and behind each post. The cab is mostly complete bodywork wise. The dang door just does not fit.

Is the cab mounted onto the frame yet? If it was mine I would make sure that the cab is mounted square to the frame. A door gap issue that appears to be minor could rear its ugly heels in a bad way someplace else. I'd investigate a little more before I started grinding on the door to make it fit.
Good Luck
Don

No, the cab is sitting on wood platform on top of chassis. My plan is to undercoat this weekend and then bottom of cab is complete and I can go ahead and mount to chassis. Rear shackles are already restored and ready to go.

I will follow your suggestion and see if makes any difference.

I had BOTH doors that I got from a donor truck 1/4 inch too big for the opening. Turns out that back in the day, the different plants could be off by this much. A Kansas City cab should use Kansas City doors. If you get St Louis doors, you are screwed.

I tried a porta power to carefully move the openings larger, but to no avail. I ended up cutting the cab with a thin grinder disk all the way up the door opening, then easily bent the opening to fit the door. When I say EASILY, its relative. It was a total pain and something I will never forget. I did it, but it was one of those tasks a very well equipped commercial restoration facility would do. There was way more to it than just a single cut, but its something that is ONE OFF, so you do what you have to do at the time. The hope is you will never have to do it again. When I was done, I put the door on, complete with the newer style latch, modified for the cab and it is perfect in every way. If you are in over your head, and I feel your pain, trade the door for another one. Jim Carters has a huge selection of doors. I know this because I helped supply them. Its much easier to go to KC then go thru what I did. I did it because I could. LOL!

There are very large tolerances given for the gaps in the Assy manual. Huge. The doors have tolerances also as do all parts in this world. All doors, regardless of where they were made, would have to be within the tolerance specs for doors. I hope you know that the fenders can be adjusted to help some of the vertical gap. Don't know where your trouble is exactly. You need to actually wait until you try hanging the doors. You can shave doors and fenders and openings but I can't believe you will have to. Your cab did not move unless you cut floor or other "supporting" parts. I can't exactly tell by your description of what you cut whether it needed bracing before cut or not.

I had this problem with a severely rusted and repaired cab. You absolutely need to mount the cab on a strait frame and adjust it as specified by the book. I spread out the opening at least 3/4" without buckling anything. I spread the opening by bolting a big c-clamp to a piece of square tubing in such a way as to use the screw of the clamp to do the spreading. I went from hinge pillar to latch pillar. Even if you do buckle something, I think that would be easier to fix than the heat warping of the door, with all of the welding of the entire length of the door, is likely to cause.

Carl: See what you mean and is a good solution but it would be last straw for me. Maybe if his doors are bad he can kill two birds. It's a decision I'm glad not to make and I don't know AD stuff that well.

If you are bolting the door on the mounted cab, and the door wont close, not even close, you have to find out why. Since I did a lot of work in the junkyards grabbing doors and much other goodies for sale to the vendors, it is obvious that the machinery of one plant didn't match the machinery of another. Sometimes there is nothing you can do but A) replace the doors with the doors you want from the same factory, or B) cut, modify, cut, and cut some more. If you are doing what I did and replacing the 1950 doors with 1953 doors so I could get the pushbutton and vents, even the same factory could be different in their tooling in 3 years.

Ive heard these stories so many times. Its much easier for the mild restorer, home builder, to just call Carter and get doors that fit. He has outbuildings FULL of doors. Hope this helps!

Mild restorers? Homebuilders? and you are.....???

So, I completed the underside of the cab yesterday and mounted it on the completed chassis. It fits OK. I had a 1/8" shim under the right front mounting point in order to get the proper 1.83" clearance from frame dimension. Doing so also solve the problem of the left rear of the cab being more than .76" from frame to mount bracket. In other words, it solved the "rocking" problem. Measuring rear cab cutout sides from frame, I am just least than 1/4" difference from one side to the other. Can't get any closer without enlarging front mount hole in frame.

So, the door does not even fit within the opening, so a bit more than 1/4" too large. Very consistent all the way from bottom of door to belt line. Door is even tight at the window frame in places. After reading Deve's responses, I imagine it is possible the PO replaced the door at some point. I vaguely remember the door not closing properly when I purchased the truck. I will give Jim Carter's a call to inquire about a replacement door, but may give it shot in modifying what I have. If JC has a door, at a reasonable cost, I have nothing to lose in trying (other than my time). I just cannot see how it is a cab related issue. But, the opening is smaller than the other side which makes it seem a cab issue.

I am concerned that if I size the door to the opening, then the rubber door seal will be a very tight fit and make closing the door difficult when complete.

BTW, the cab looks good sitting on the chassis (instead of on block on top of chassis). I still have lots of prep work to do on the cab before painting, but getting closer. And, I have to ensure good door fit before painting cab. Thanks for all the reply's

I thought thru the fix to this very carefully and even had a few specialists take a look at the problem. We all agreed that modifying the doors would open me up to all sorts of problems.

I ended up slitting the cab on the outside where it meets the door jamb from bottom clear to the top with a thin disk on a 4" Makita grinder, then pulling the whole thing back. There is more to it than that but what to do next becomes obvious, small slits here and there to make the opening uniform.

Now that its done and the doors fit perfectly, close perfectly, etc. You cant tell anything was ever done. Good luck! Smart to sort all this out before paint.

The problem with sizing a door to fit a cab or a cab to fit the door is that if door is damaged, you have to make a "custom" door again. Shipping a door to you would be expensive. Why don't you just get one off of local craigslist? A nice guy would even let you try it. If you can get the specs for the door and door opening and check it, maybe you will find out the truck was in an accident and "fixed" wrong. Or the door has been "customized" already. The adjustments provided on doors are so that any door fits any cab. Otherwise how would a collision repair place get a replacement door made in any factory back in the day and fix a truck? How would a modern day replacement door fit? (LMC, Brothers, etc.) One of your items is out of spec/tolerance, find out which one and fix or replace that one TO SPEC. Like I said these trucks had pretty big built in gaps, so you are WAY off. You are correct about the rubber. that is another can of worms with a shaved door or split opening. I have never heard of anyone taking a stock, never damaged truck and start cutting into the door opening to fit a stock door. Bottom line: If you did not notice an interference fit before disassembly, then you warped it. You can confirm this by measuring to specs. If you did, either buy another cab or customize a door. Because you ain't done yet, what if the windshield doesn't fit due to warp (after cab is painted)?, what if the fender won't fit? what if it's racked such that the door has to be a parallelogram? Even if others say they have done it. I would not go down the road of hacking, cutting, shaving, welding, trimming...it could be a dead end. You are a construction manager, you know what happens when you try to start with a wrong part. Ask yourself, "Am I in a hurry here"?, "am I trying to move forward while dragging a chain?"

Besides measuring an exact dimension that would help JC give you the right door, also tell them what factory made your cab. Not sure they would know, but its worth a shot. Each factory could be off enough to have these fitment problems. Remember, its not just the door manufacturing between factories, its also the cab. If your cab is a Kansas City cab by chance, JC will likely have a door that fits because most of the yards we used to strip the doors were in Kansas and western Missouri.

The AD's weren't done in the 60's and beyond when tooling was so perfect that it didn't matter. These parts were made in an era when the tooling was done by hand and the stampings could easily be off by the amount you are talking about. Been there, done that. No matter what, think it through carefully. Since its on the frame and you are happy with the cab fit, sounds like its time for either another door or some modification.

You cant mess with the door very much because you have window fitment issues, stamped wraparounds, etc. After doing the mods on my cab, I have perfectly aligned and perfect seams and since I didn't mess with the doors, nor the inside cab dimensions, rubber and latching is also good.

You get people every now and then that cant imagine how tooling can be different from factory to factory so completely cant imagine how this issue can be possible. I have two AD's with this problem. The second one is because someone changed the door with 'just any' AD. A 53 that has one pull down latch and one pushbutton latch with the pull down side not closing at all just isn't acceptable! lol.

Too bad you cant take a trip to KC. Carter has entire outbuildings with doors everywhere. The internet sure doesn't solve everything. I know in my case life would have been SO much easier if I would have been willing to haul the cab to KC. But, all turned out really well anyway. Just added a month to the resto.

So, I did a little more comparison from one side to the other. The drivers (left) door fit perfectly (about 1/8" gap all around). I measured the opening at both hinge locations (from hinge jamb to strike jamb). Then I measure the right side (problematic side). the opening on the right side is consistently 1/8" narrower (smaller) than the left (good) side. Now, if both doors were the same (Unfortunately, the left side door is away getting oil canning removed from the skin...something I learned I cannot successfully accomplish without making a mess of things) then the right (bad) door should fit in the opening with say 1/16" gap all around. But, the right door wont even fit in the opening. It is 1/16" or so wider than the actual opening.

If my metal work was bad, I would expect a pinch at the bottom of the opening or something similar, but the problem is very consistent over the entire opening. Nothing on the cab seems out of whack and I am confident I did not introduce errors. The door is just wrong. Remember, I did not replace the rocker panel and never completely cut either jamb loose from the rocker panel.

So, two choices for me: Cut .156" (5/32", I think I did the math right...half of 5/16") from both sides of the door, or get a "new" door.

so now you know your choices, time to choose obviously you'll run into further worms in either can

Bill

Yeah.. you have done your homework. But.. I don't recommend removing from the hinge side at all. To make mine work, I just got a thin cutoff disk (the thin ones are about right for what you want to do) then make the slit just on the outside of the cab and STOP at the bottom of the window. Since you didn't mess with the hinged side, put the door on, take a 2x4 that's long enough to push the slit uniformly (as best you can) to close the gap. THEN try the door again. You may get away with not having to get into the window frame area. If you need to take off more, you can and your door is right there to play with it until its right. Good luck! Before you decide you need to take more off, make sure you adjust the hinges for optimum. Patience is so important here.

Work a little on doors last night. Opening measures 35-5/8". I started grinding the door edges back. The skin is staying put without the need for spot welding...will proceed carefully and slowing trying not to induce too much heat into the skin. Most of the metal needs to come off the latch side of the door. So, I am worried that the rubber will be too tight and that I need to move the inner door jamb/side inward as well. I suppose I would cut from bottom to top near the 90 degree bend (the 1/4" flat area) and then weld back together. This will ensure the inner door is not too close to the body door jamb. I cannot take much from the hinge side as it will force the window frame too far forward. The window frame portion of the door fits fairly well.

In inspecting the door, it really seems that the inner door is set too far back relative to the outer skin. The overhang (where seal glues in place) is about 15/16" on the hinge side and 5/8" on the latch side. If these dimension were equal, the door would fit better.

Also, I found two '53 doors on craigslist about 60 miles away for $100. Seller said the doors are approximately 35.5 to 35.75" wide. I may purchase just to compare and as a backup if I totally screw the doors up trying to make them fit.

Update: I got the door to fit the opening fairly well if not a bit tight on the gaps (less than 1/8"). I measured door jamb positions as indicated in assembly manual and both are very close to spot on and consistent from one side to the other. So, I am convinced I have a door issue only.

trailing edge door gap

Door interior fit

Good work David. Is there room for the latch/catch?

Excellent question. I will be digging out my restored latch and strike this evening or next for a quick test fit.

Update: I got the door to fit very well. All rust perforation repaired with new metal. Door edges welded and ground down to a very consistent (close to) 1/8" gap. A little more fine tuning of he door edge to ensure they flush with cab sheet metal and then minor plastic filler. I have the door hung on the rebuild hinges and everything works well. Total time spent making a too large door fit and repairing rust was about 18 manhours.