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Hi, I’m at the point where I’m test fitting the doors before welding the A-pillars to the new floor and am stumped. I’ve spent a few hours adjusting but can’t seem to rid this weird dip near the vent area (circled).
The cab was braced prior to tear down and I have the A-pillar screwed and clamped to the rocker, but it really wants to sag in addition to this weird dip. Are you guys using any type of spacers or reinforcement upgrade I’m not aware of? Any suggestions?
Tough to tell from pics , even though you took good ones , but to me it sure appears the door is the problem . Is the cowl area all original ? How much gap do you have at the top ? As the door comes straight up that gap will improve .
Here is mine . There is less than a quarter inch at the top but pretty decent alignment all around . If you want perfection you will be bending cutting and adding . These trucks were never made anywhere near today's standards .
Hey Berg,
These old Doors are tough. We've got (1) that sits just right & the other
not so much. Getting them to latch & stay latched is just as much fun.
Perfection is tough.... You my have to take some drastic measures to get
it where you want.. We are living with our's though I'm tempted to take another
shot at it after 7 years. Be happy if the latches work right!
Appreciate the help guys. To help clarify, I’m by no means expecting perfection but it looks very odd and I don’t remember seeing it when I initially bought the truck. I don’t imagine the door rubber will even fit in the remaining gap once final assembly comes around.
At a side profile view the gaps are acceptable to me, at least on the passenger side. Anywhere from 1/4” to 3/8”. Lets exclude the drivers door for now since it was pinched into the cowl from time of purchase...
What’s left of the cowls is original and I purposely did that, but from the top of the vent to the top of the door window it is ‘sunken’, for lack of a better term. Picture #2 is a bottom-up view to show the difference of terrain. Any additional thoughts?
The gap at the rear is the same, 1/4”-3/8”. When I replaced the cab corners I didn’t get an exact plum drop so I’ll have to shave a little on the back bottom, but once that happens the door will completely close and I’ll have consistent gaps throughout. It’s tough to tell the gap on the front bottom without the full cowl installed, but based on the doors alignment with the pillar it appears it’ll be consistent as well.
My fear is if I don’t get this corrected it’ll have a waterfall effect when installing the front clip.
It looks like you might be able to lift the door a tiny bit to help there.The other things to keep in mind is that it is hard to get them perfect. I also had an automotive body shop guy/teacher tell me that a lot of older vehicles have a small step from one panel to the next. Engineers found out that if you did that, that eliminated a lot of wind noise so in this case the cowl panel sitting proud or higher then the door would be OK. Take that for what it is worth, I'm not a body guy, just someone repeating what I was told. For my truck the passenger side works great, the drivers side needed a lot of work to get it closer to nice.
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