Vitesse Doors

[BAPIT123]

[face=Arial][/face]  Hi every one i have just bought a 1968 Vitesse saloon (45,000 miles) can any one help with the problem of having to slam the doors to get them to latch I am certain that this can be over come be been new to the car I thought that I would ask the experts.

[glang]

Congratulations good choice!
Are you saying that the doors take a lot of force to close? If so this is adjustable by moving the catch plate on the door post further away from the centreline of the car. The door latching mechanism will then catch earlier and the door not close so much.
However the downside is that the door skin may not sit flush with the body of the car and/or not seal so well against the door rubber so generating more wind noise and letting in rain particularly around the frameless window.
I spent a long time getting mine as good as possible and they do still require quite a slam to close especially if youre comparing them with a modern vehicle. To do this I played with the aforemention catch plate, the door hinges, the quarterlight frame and even the door rubber mounting flange (this can be tapped in or out to change the amount of seal contact with the door in particular places).
Ive ended up with good sealing, good panel gaps and even maintained the alignment of the door skin indentation with the matching identations on front and rear wings....

[Casper]

First thing is to make sure the sliding triangles on the bottom of the B-post catch assembly are free to move easily.  They are sprung loaded and get gummed up.  WD40 to the fore.

Almost all the door seals currently available are incorrect, being a baloon section that is too big, preventing the door from closing easily.

There are a range of adjustments to try after that, but meanwhile, search the forum for 'tub spread', although this is normally less of an issue with saloons.

Enjoy your Vitesse and welcome to the board.

C.

[garyf]

All good advice above, if you do a search on door seals in the Herald/Vitesse section of the Forum you will see posts showing the correct profile of seals which will certainly help with the door closing problem.

I suspect (Even though your car appears to be low mileage) that the door seals have been replaced sometime over the past 40+ years?

I purchased a set of the correct profile door seals for my convertible during its rebuild off Bill at Rarebits4classics several yeas ago, and my doors closed without slamming.

I believe Bill's now ceased trading but I maybe wrong, Woolies the Trim people do a similar Lip type door seal which isn't too expensive.

Gary

  

[daver clasper]

Spoke to Bill (Rare Bits) at Stoneleigh. He implied that they will still be doing shows and I think the seals may still be available mail order?.

Dave

[Pete Lewis]

a word on tub spread  this is when the bottom of the doors tend to be proud of the B post and the shut at the B post waist is tight and crushing the seal

occurs when the top of the B post waist spread outwards over the years ,  many have this ,   it does happen on saloons and CVs

Pete

[heraldcoupe]

Quoted from daver clasper

Spoke to Bill (Rare Bits) at Stoneleigh. He implied that they will still be doing shows and I think the seals may still be available mail order?.

That's pretty much the way it goes. I'm still happy to supply the stuff no-one else wants to sell (such as decent door seals) but it's pretty much by word of mouth. The job I'm now doing means I'm not able to ship packages every day, and emails can take a bit longer to deal with than I'd like. But the seals remain available,

Cheers,
Bill.