Door is too far back

[Bartman]

I've been working on my body panels and I think I have the front all lined up correctly now (cowl, hood, inspection panels, fenders, etc.). The problem I have now is with my passenger door. It's too far back so that the gap between the door and the rear quarter panel is very tight and there is a big space between the door and the front fender. If it was the other way around I could put in some shims to move the door back, but how can I get it to move forward?

 

I can take some picture if that will help.

[RB26powered74zcar]

I don't know if you know this but the hinges are adjustable for and aft. There are, I belive, three bolts each hinge, hidden in a pocket covered by the kick panels....

[kcelectronics]

HI

You need to align both the doors first, and then work forward fitting the fenders next! The hinges are moveable, but with the fenders ON it’s a bit cramped, and you may need to pull the fender forward to give you the correct gaps?

[Bartman]

Here's a couple of quick pic's:

 

Starting lining everything with the doors sounds like a very good plan, and no I didn't realize that the hinges actually allow fore and aft adjustment.

As always, thanks for all the help!

[RB26powered74zcar]

I think all the lines match up and look fine on the rear of your door. I'd say its more to do with the fender needing to be moved toward the rear if possible....

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[johnc]

Yup, front fender needs to move back but if its one of the Chinese made ones you might be out of luck. As a last resort you can very carefully weld a 1/8" bead on the back edge of the fender and then file/sand it smooth.

[v8wannabe2]

Ther rear quarters are non-moveable so start aligning from there. Do the doors first then the front fenders. The challenges usually come with the hood and cowl. I used spacers and had to elongate some holes to get mine the way I wanted it. The whole process can be time consuming, if you end up with evenly spaced gaps it will be worth it.

[Bartman]

Okay since the rear quarter to door gap seems to be pretty good, I started by moving the fender back until the front gap looked good. The bottom of the fender fits good, but it's sitting out in the picture because the bottom bolt isn't installed yet. I'm just putting stuff on loosely until I figure out the correct placement of everything.

I'm pretty happy with the results! The problem now is with the cowl and inspection lids. The cowl is temporarily installed without the little rubber pockets because it was hard to get it back enough to fit the inspection lids (you can see the cowl panel is low in the back right now in the pic above). I had to shim the inspection lids in order to get them far back enough so that they didn't hit the fender at the front.

So I get some work to do, but this is probably the right way to go about it.

 

Thanks again to everyone for their help and advice.

[v8wannabe2]

Your on the right track, sometimes you have to "split the difference" widen both door gaps a bit to move the fender forward to give more room for cowl/hood kinda idea. I had to greatly elongate the holes for the hood to get it how I wanted it. Keep tinkering with it till you refine it to what you want.

[Bartman]

It looks like I will have to "split the difference". I couldn't get everything else to line up with the fender as far back as I had it in my last picture. I had to move the fender forward a little bit to get everything to fit properly. So I will probably wind up removing the kick panel to move the door slightly forward.

 

Thanks for all the help.

[powershift]

if your planning on repainting id do all the bodywork over the gaps and then take a cut off wheel and go through all of them, that will keep it all lined up nice.