Door gaps

[gst303]

Hi everyone,

I've been following the forums for a while and it has massively helped me in the restoration of my MKiv spit but this is my first post so be gentle!

When i took the doors off, there wasn't much left to them so i got some second hand ones, repaired them and put them on the car and they seem just a little long. They do close (sort of) but the gap is way too tight and there's not enough slack on the hinges to make them fit any better. The old doors closed pretty well but they had been badly re-skinned.

I need to cut the sills out and replace them. I don't think this is the problem becaue even though they have been badly bodged in the past they are still pretty solid and everything appears parrallel. Before i start bracing the body to do the sill work, i want to make sure that my datum is right.

I'm wondering if there are any measurements anywhere for the body?

My suspiscion is that at some point in it's life it has been in a minor collision on the off side front as the cross member had another bad repair here.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Nick Jones]

Just done something a bit similar with a very rusty tub where we used the original doors to set the door gap on the drivers side before bracing it as there was no structural strength left in the sill or lower A pillar.

Sorry , link no longer available

I actually made the bracing structure to be adjustable (can be seen in some of the pics) though in the end we didn't really need this.

Surprised the doors don't fit in the gap - problems with the fit of the skin to adjacent panels between different doors are not that unusual, but the frames are usually reasonably consistent.  Check under the hinges where they fix to the door in case there are packing pieces to make them longer to fit the original shell.

Nick

[gst303]

Thanks Nick, very helpful.

Back to the rusty tub to see what i can find....

[JensH]

There is a 'how to fix your door gap'-thread with lots of info some were here - try to do a search.