I took this week off and am working on Gracie. After taking out a bunch of dents out of the rear door that I had repaired the lower hinge mounts on, I then tackled the gap between them. With the repaired lower hinge the gap was ~ 1/8" at the bottom, but rubbed at the top. I debated if I should trim the edge of the door down. I stuck a thick putty knife in the gap and it opened up to 1/8" top to bottom??? I looked to see where it was moving and it was the top hinge where attached to the door. The PO had tacked the hinge rivets to the door skin like at the bottom, but it had felt tight when I tried to move it when open. Must have been the weight that was making it feel tight tho. I bit the bullet and broke out the cutoff wheel and drill. After grinding off the weld, removing the cover skin and drilling out the rivets, I found the inner support was no longer attached to the door frame behind the hinge. I took out the support, cleaned it up and straightened it. I then tacked nuts to the back so I could use countersunk allen head bolts to replace the rivets as I had done on the lower hinge. After spending a fair amount of time making sure everything aligned, I plug welded the support back in. It still took a lot of tweeking to get the door to align properly. I was finally sucessful just before quitting for the evening. I now need to replace the cover skin today. Hopefully I can find a couple more countersunk bolt the right size locally, I'd hate to have to drive 45 minutes to get two bolts ( I had bought 6 for the lower hinge to have a couple spares just in case).
Now both hinges mountings have been rebuilt.
Interesting discovery: The passenger rear door had been replaced or stripped in it's history, there is no trace of the light green paint originally on the truck from the factory.

 

50+ yrs of PO's, weight, wind, kids swinging, and people using them as leaning posts play hell on those Ol' doors.
I'll have to check those areas when I get to them. Sometimes both doors shut with little effort, sometimes I can't get them closed. The hindge screws are tight.
Hmm, More things to tear apart

 

Sam Foose once said, "Son, you gotta pay attention to the details!!!!" Good job in checking the alignment before getting grinder happy.

 

That AVATAR almost looks like my Dog when she wants something.

 

lol, mine too. I was trying out one of my wife's programs.

 

Finished the hinge rebuild today. The center gap is an even 1/8" top to bottom and the feature lines in both doors line up perfectly. There was still one gap that wasn't right, the gap between the passenger side rear door and the body was a nice even 1/4" until about 6" below the beltline where it widened to 3/8" from there to the bottom. The driver's side door was an even 1/4" all the way. Since the door fit and aligned perfectly otherwise I decided it must be that the body was slightly misaligned when built (it was built as a work truck, after all) or was gapped to match the original door? That widening gap disturbed me, so I welded a length of 1/8" rod to the door edge from where the gap started widening to the bottom hinge. After welding it to both the inside and outside and grinding the welds smooth, I used a piece of 1/4" aluminum plate scrap I had on hand as a gauge to scribe a consistant 1/4" gap and trimmed the widened edge to the line. It came out perfect, the piece of plate just slips into the gap the full length. I just have to add the 5" long piece of rod to edge below the hinge to the bottom of the door to match tomorrow. I'll leave giving all the repairs a skim coat of filler until I finish taking out all the rest of the 50 years of dents on the rest of the truck. Once I finish the rear doors I'll move on to the bottoms of the rear fenders where a PO covered more dents with bondo. I'm working from the rear to the front of the truck.
Oh yes, Gracie will be taking another step into the darkside! We decided that rather than buying a new set of repro original taillights for her (one was smashed by a falling limb a few weeks back) we would use the opportunity (and the money) to fit her with a new set of led lit 99 Caddy ElDerado tail lights.

 

Caddy? Did someone say Caddy?? WOOHOOOOO!!!!

Wow AX! Now that you have such a great workspace your are moving right along! Congrats on the progress. Thats cool that you found the problem with the upper hinges and were able to fix it fairly easily.

Keep up the great pace!
Bobby

 

Thought you'd like that Bobby! Wasn't an "easy" fix. I finished the lower portion of the hinge gap filler (I noticed on the portion I widened the outer skin was folded over the frame deeper than the properly gapped portion, so I surmise the door was misbuilt that way originally) then kept looking at the fact the door sat quite a bit inwards from the frame at the top. Then it hit me that the portion above the beltline was inset quite a bit compared to the other door. I had been concentrating on the center gap I hadn't paid attention to that fact before. I took some measurements and determined that at the upper hinge the door was inset 3/16". I took out the bolts that replaced the rivets to see what would happen if I moved the door out that much. It fit beautifully even without the hinge bolted down. I once again decided to bite the bullet, removed the hinge, welded up the original countersunk holes where the rivets were originally and redrilled them 3/16" over. After counterboring the holes for the countersunk bolts I bolted the hinge back in place. Holding my breath I swung the door closed... UREKA I shouted (or something equally as colorful) It fit PERFECTLY!!!!
I was so happy I decided to leave the rear doors and see what was going on with the lower rear fenders. I took the grinder to the lower section that had some funny waves in it and immediately hit bondo. No real surprise, I had hit a skim coated area on the rear door as well. After snapping a few "before" pictures to show where the bondo was I continued grinding down to bare metal to prepare to straighten any and all dented metal. The putty was 3/8" thick in a couple spots where two lengthwise scrapes were puttied over, but as I had hoped and expected from previously examining the area from the back side the metal was otherwise pristine. For some unknown reason someone had stripped the entire area down to bare metal, (I didn't find any original paint except on the flange lining the wheel well) then bondoed over the dents rather than removing them! Kinda bassakwards since the area is completely exposed on the back side. Tomorrow I will straighten the area. One curious thing I ran into on the rear door and again in the lower fender is that some unknown person added 4 spots of braze, each less than 1/2" in diameter. Maybe some earlier body man used a slide hammer to pull out the area then brazed the holes closed??? They are not in any specific pattern like something was once bolted on, yet the panel doesn't show signs of being hammer on either???

 

Ax, I can't wait to get some lesson on your hammer and dolly work. I just redid the schedule to get me out early on Friday. Check your pm's

Kevin

PS: Save some work for me!

 

Bullit Holes

I have several on my Panel fixed the same way. I can line up the larger thru & thru holes. I found several mangle 22's ? before I found the holes.

Thats my take on it.

 

Anyone else want to join us for some bodywork lessons?

Dick, you could be right about bullet holes, hadn't thought of that!

 

AX - I could have used a tutorial on bodywork, but I have muddled thru that stage now. Your get-together will be fun.

I have been following this thread on the rear doors and while not at all familiar with the panel hinge setup, the gapping method was neat. I know what a thrill it is to get stuff to align correctly when you have looked at it misaligned for a long time. When I finally got my doors right, It was celebration time. I had to get my gaps tight by adding weld passes to the vertical edges of the doors, much like you did to the cab side of yours with the rod.

Others may never notice the hundreds of little things that make building one of these so satisfying, but they also probably won't see all the compromises and imperfect areas either. The builder knows where every one of those are, though. I eep telling myself that it's a driver, not a show truck.

Whenever I bring the wife out to see the latest progress, she asks "what am I looking for?" Good question, huh?

 

I've been taking pix, probably add to my gallery tonite.

 

AX,

Well, You make it "sound" easy. I sure wish I could find my way out for a little bodywork tutorial, It sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend.

Keep up the great work
Bobby

 

I am looking forward to it. So much so I have spent the day doing year end work while my employees are enjoying a day off. It is kind of nice not to be interupted though. It almost seems like I am getting something done. To bad its not on my truck. Tomorrow is truck day.