This might be a tough question. I'm wondering if anyone has spec/diagram for the door opening on a 1973 F100. reason I ask is I have completely gone rockers on one side and big rust holes on the other side and someone has botched them up so I'm looking to see if I can get a "close enough" measurements so at least the doors will look like they fit. Thanks in advance

 

Just FYI, you can buy a rust free cab out west for a few hundred bucks, or a complete rust free pickup for $1500 up depending on how nice you want it to be. I simply don't see how you rust belt guys justify the time and money to fix a rust bucket these aren't hemi Cuda's.

 

There's a few reasons. A couple hundred in new sheet metal and a couple weekends of work vs buying a unseen, hopefully truthfully advertised, "good" cab and ship it. Then hoping it doesn't get damaged in transport. If the "new" cab is stripped, then you have hours upon hours of work swapping everything over. And don't forget you'll probably need to paint the "new" cab.Not to mention doing a full cab swap on a crusty northern truck can open a huge can of worms in other areas.

With an existing truck someone could do cab mounts, rockers, floorboards, and cab corners in a couple weekends and not have to deal with moving cabs and maybe messing up body mounts, lining up doors and fenders, deal with swapping a whole interior, dash,wiring harnesses. etc or doing a full cab repaint. Last time i looked into shipping a body cross country, maybe 10 years ago?, it was gonna be $600 just to have it shipped and that was with a deal from an independent hot shot where I was willing to wait a couple months until they got out there for another run. So even if you could get a good cab for a few hundred, you're gonna be ~$1000 into just to have it in your yard.

Personally, the only time I could justify the cost to buy and ship a cab is if the roof/rain gutters needs to be replaced, anything below the cowl is fairly easy and cheap to do.

 

While I appreciate the concern and believe me I have thought about it but this is a father son /grandson project so its not perfection, its time and learning. This a good project to just learn good welding skills cause it will try you with a billion blow through holes and so on. Learn some mudding skills, learning some wiring skills and so on. I'm just looking for door opening dimensions so that I can get it close and work through why certain measurements mean something and others might not.

 

You can get a rough opening estimate by measuring the door width and adding 3/16"-1/4" per side for the gap. If you want it 100%, you'll need to cut out the bad work, hang the doors and fenders, get everything lined up correctly, then tack all the new pieces in, constantly checking on the door lines/gaps as you go, then weld it all up once it's good. I did body work professionally for a few years and that's how we would've done it, measurements don't work for stuff like this.

Hopefully you're working with good OEM doors. I've seen some absolutely horrible aftermarket shells that needed to be cut apart and reworked to fit a known good cab properly. It wasn't uncommon for us to separate the skin from an aftermarket door to tweak the frame because it was welded together slightly out of shape. If you're basing alignments off something like that, you're gonna be chasing your tail.

 

Not sure what measurements you need. If just how wide from front to back, if the cab is that far gone, junk it. If the doors aren't close to fitting, junk it. You could measure the door and add for gaps, like 1/8".

 

Rust is optional, and if you know anything you can spot it, I tolerate zero rust. .something like this '77 rust free high boy isn't worth the drive for $ 2,000 rather than trying to halfway fix a rust bucket? part it out or part your rust bucket out to fix it, either way. just sayi'in give it some thought before you buy a bunch of chinese parts.

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I guess it won't let me post the add. rust free complete '77 high boy project in eastern OR. not mine.

 

thanks for the tips - I did take measurements off the door which are original, just trying to probably be more precise than need to be. On one side concerned the rocker is low and should be raised up like 1/2 inch. In reality most things I'm doing won't make too much of a difference since the older trucks are just that; older trucks and they were not precise. As the saying goes, " I'll do my best and caulk the rest"

 

1/2"? Some guys in some parts would just remove the doors and use a seat belt or a hinged gate bar across the opening.

I shot for even gaps, and am between 1/8"<->3/16" on them.

When I suggested what I did, I was not sure if you were needing total opening, or the several widths and rises at the threshold steps for example? My thresholds have been slightly modded, sealed, and stainless steel added over them.so I was of no help there.

 

Its a journey and all knowledge along the way is welcomed. The doors are original and were fairly good, or at least good enough to get initial measurements so when I cut/welded in new patch panels the size/measurements all lined up within like 1/8 inch in most cases so with weather stripping an so on a little fudge will work fine. The inside door structure, again most are areas they all rust but someone previous basically just took sheet metal and screwed it in so in some places the real dimension is not easy to tell, well not "close enough' so that is why I was wondering if anyone had some document of the opening. I'll cut/chop/rebuild till it looks close and looks fairly right.

 

What about reaching out to a maybe/hopefully local semi local in state FTE Wisconsin chapter member and that way you can actually measure what you need and or take pics. Worse case hit up your local JY for a 73-79 truck. WI chapter link. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/forum120/

Yea sorry not much detailed help in the cab/rocker dept. A "builders book" maybe have more detail?

 

It can be done. The good news is that there are bound to be other dent side trucks in your area that you can photograph and take measurements from. Join your local FTE chapter and ask around. Scout the local JYs. They are out there. Who knows, you may stumble across a better cab or a cab with better rockers, floor etc.
Alternatively, get a bunch of square steel tubing together and fabricate what is missing or weak. Watch a few videos of people working on old rusted hulks that have no floor at all.

 

Some great ideas thanks! Looking at that diagram above, there are some good measurement points that I can also use on some of the other things I've got going on. Thanks @77&79F250