Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Deadeye]

I'm having a real nightmare with panel gaps

4 hours with a mate the other day and we got both the wing to door and door to rear quarter perfectly gapped.

However, I had to raise the a-pillar to open the gap at the bottom of the door to the rear quarter right.

Now, of coarse, the bottom of the door has a bigger gap between it and the sill at the front.

My question is: can a door gap be fixed with the use of a quality high-build primer!? For example, close the gap as the top to match the gap at the bottom?

It's causing me to lose sleep as this thing might end up in the skip after a year of work.

It's as if the body has sagged the wrong way - i.e. the front and back have sagged down like it's been supported only in the middle like a see-saw.

It doesn't help that I've also replaced the rear quarters but there's no ambiguity with he rear quarter as there are so many points where it meets the shell.

This is where I've got to, I had to raise the A-Pillar about 4mm to get this, the problem is the lower rear of the door.

[MikeEdwards]

Remember, though, that the quality of replacement panels is not always all it could be.

I'm working on a Sportshatch, I've had numerous issues, more trouble when using NOS panels than with bits I've made. I used a section of a rear quarter to repair part of the window frame, although it's on right the swages don't line up. I spent some time worrying whether I've put the door pillar in the right place because I couldn't make the NOS front wing line up, only to be relieved when I tried the old rusty one and it's spot on. Doors vary in size by quite some distance. I've spent the last two days splitting the two halves of the NOS back panel because whoever spot welded it together back in the day didn't do it properly.

There's a school of thought that the main reason NOS panels are around for cars of this age is because they were ordered up for a repair when the cars were newer, found to not fit properly, stuck on one side and a replacement ordered. Fast forward twenty or thirty years, the ones they threw on one side are suddenly NOS ex-dealer genuine panels.

I doubt you'd get much help from high-build primer, I've seen (on American Hotrod, though) people building the gap up with filler to get it right, though that always strikes me as too fragile especially for a door bottom. I've got quite a wide gap across the bottom of the door and if I can't live with it I might weld a strip of steel along the top of the sill to close it up. Doubt it though, it's a seventies Vauxhall after all.

[MikeEdwards]

Also, did you post the right picture? Lower rear of door doesn't look too bad to me, hard to judge the rest without the sill in place.

Overall that looks like a nice even gap, I guess it depends on your expectation. There's a chap I see at shows with a white Mk1 GTE that he's restored, I'll have a look at that next time I see it, probably Tatton weekend after next.

What I was really getting at above was that you might have to adjust some of these panels, and it's not necessarily a sign of anything terrible.

[47Jag]

My cousin's husband was a panelbeater (long retired) and he told me that they would weld/braze 1/8" welding wire around the edge of doors to get really tight shut lines. The edge was then finished with lead loading.

Art

[Deadeye]

[Deadeye]

Here's what it did look like, the entire a-pillar was held with nothing while I replaced things it was connected to.



My wife wasn't very happy when she saw this pic

[Rick]

Wow, amazing job. Do period brochure shots give a clue as to how good/bad the fit was "back in the day" ? Saying that, they may have photographed pre-production cars not representative of production cars, but to my untrained eye, you've got a good result going on there.

RJ
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[Deadeye]

[MikeEdwards]

Yes, that looks a pretty good fit in the photo with the sill on.

That's a pretty big stripdown. I removed the door pillar on mine because the panel behind it was bad, made a point of making sure it went back in the same place only to find out that damage while in a field for 8-odd years meant it was wrong, difference was it was now in the wrong place and very strong. It's heartbreaking to have to start cutting things out that you think you've done with, but time spent now will pay dividends.

[Deadeye]

[Rick]

Interesting stuff, do you have any photos of the car prior to stripdown, and earlier in the resto?

RJ
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[MikeEdwards]

[Deadeye]

[MikeEdwards]

Talking to a chap a couple of weeks ago who worked in Ellesmere Port when these (and my car) were being built, he told me that the production line was regularly trying to chase down up to a 10mm difference in dimensions from one side of the vehicle to the other, which was done by adjusting panel positions and picking different wings etc until it all basically lined up. So it's not surprising we're having trouble getting better gaps now.