Fender to door alignment

[bmar]

I finally welded the skins back onto the doors, after several years, and found the alignment between the doors and the fender to be off more then 3/4th of and inch. I don't see anyway to adjust either the door or the fender to compensate for such a gap. Like most trucks in the 1955-59 era, the bottom of the cab was rusted in this location and required patch panels. I thought I had aligned everything, but 3/4 of an inch is quite a gap. Any ideas what I might try?

[bmar]

I added a stock picture as posting to an off site is a major PITA

[Kim57]

These trucks came from the factory with terrible gaps.
If you're getting the rear gap to be nice and tight 3/4" in front may not be off that far.
I had to do a ton of work on mine to get decent gaps all around.
Kim

[fabguy]

Originally Posted by Kim57

These trucks came from the factory with terrible gaps.
If you're getting the rear gap to be nice and tight 3/4" in front may not be off that far.
I had to do a ton of work on mine to get decent gaps all around.
Kim

+1,
It took hours and hours on each side to get them aligned decently. It is a slow and painful process.
Posted via Mobile Device

[bmar]

I will take some pictures today and get them posted on here. There are gaps between the door and the lower part of the fender, but the biggest problem is the fender sticks out beyond the door almost 3/4th of an inch. When I replaced the lower fender with a patch panel, I also had to replace the lower fender support. The work looked ok until I got the door back together and tried a test fit. I will get some pictures on here of the problems, thanks for the help.

[Iceman_70]

Originally Posted by bmar

I will take some pictures today and get them posted on here. There are gaps between the door and the lower part of the fender, but the biggest problem is the fender sticks out beyond the door almost 3/4th of an inch. When I replaced the lower fender with a patch panel, I also had to replace the lower fender support. The work looked ok until I got the door back together and tried a test fit. I will get some pictures on here of the problems, thanks for the help.

Bmar, did you make any progress on this ?? Issue solved ? Anything you can share ?

I've put the front on, to check the allignment and as I have to repair the front fenders ... I have acceptable gaps on the fender-to-hood, and door-to-cab, but the lower fender-to-door gap is very bad ...





I will replace the lower tip of the fender, so I can calculate in some adjustments, but I first want to have it straight as much as possible ...
I also understand from searching the forum that these TF's came with terrible gaps, so maybe it's just putting everything as straigth as possible and then cut and weld away ...

[bmar]

I have parts from three different trucks, so right now I have hours and hours of welding and grinding to get the gaps straight and looking decent.

[Divine 59]

I would suspect part of the door gap issue may be if your cab and doors came from different assembly plants. As others said these parts were not built to close tolerances. If you mix and match it could contribute to your woes. Just my .02

[55metalmonkey]

Took me quite a ling time to get mine right. The biggest thing was to get the cab mounts and the core support shimmed so the body line on the side was straight, then weld the edge of the fender and door to close in on the gap.

[bmar]

I fixed the problem with the door and fender not lining up. I ordered a replacement part for the lower cab (first picture) that is the part where the fender bolted on. I bolted the fender to the cab body before I welded the new part on. this time the fender lines up and I have been mig welding the gaps shut. Eventually I will start the process of grinding and fitting until I get an even gap and everything lines up.

[bmar]

Been quite a while since I have made a post to here. Not much on the pickup, but spent a great deal of time and money on the Corvette I have owned for years. I pulled out the old smog engine and installed a LS1/4l60e engine/tranny. now that is finished I am back to finishing the pickup

[bmar]

I have been working mostly on the interior of my '57 with seats and a center console. Also some pictures of work on the truck bed from a few years back.

[bmar]

A few more pictures of the bed. Also one of the overhead console.

[mr48chev]

They both look pretty good from here. I can remember wanting that model of Corvette pretty bad about 25 years ago. Couldn't find one in my price range at the time that didn't need a bunch of work even then.

[dsraven]

if all is good, hinge pins and bushings, cab hinge pockets, door hinge mounting areas are not rusted out or have broken spot welds then try to adjust the door to the cab opening and step rocker to see if you can get that looking good, relatively centred and not gonna leak air to badly. check the gap on the inside of the door opening as well.
the fender to door gap issue can be compounded by rusty front cab mounts, so the cab floor sags out and allows the cab to become closer to the frame. this scenario will leave you with too much gap at the bottom of the door to fender relationship. rusty rear cab mount areas will leave you tight at the bottom of the door/fender. a good idea is to check all the mounts out because the rad support determines the height of the front of the fender and the cab mounts determine the height of the rear of the fender.
the doors have a tendency to rust out or break the spot welds in the area of hinge mounting so the door can then twist. this will usually cause a small crack on the metal between the inner door panel and the outer door panel in the area just behind the vent window in the window channel. the lower hinge mount area inside the door can also be a problem with rust/spot weld cracking. basically, the door should feel pretty solid when opened and you attempt to twist the door or over-open the door slightly.
an idea I have seen guys use for alignment is to place a magnet on the front fender body line near the headlight and another one at the rear of the truck box or cab body line (depending on if you have a box or have a box with a body line that lines up). run a string between those two points, just a little bit away from the sheet metal, and then line up the rest of the body lines to be straight with the string. a guy could use tape instead of magnets i suppose. that should get the door height and cab height correct with the rest of the truck as well as be a tell tale for a banana shaped truck due to bad mounts or whatever.

[dsraven]

the cab on my 57 was sitting on the frame at the front and rear due to rusty floors. the front area was probably caused by plugged cowl vents which allow water to back up in the cowl and come out through the kick panel vents and out onto the cab floor. this scenario also can mean rusted out cowl pockets and lower hinge pocket areas. you may want to check these areas for solid.

[bmar]

Thanks for your advice dsraven, the truck is disassembled right now as I am in the process of sand blasting the body parts and spraying on primer. I still have the doors hanging on the cab and work on them from time to time to try and close up the gaps. The doors came from a 1955 that had been rolled and need a lot of attention. But now that I will soon be a member in good standing of the social security club, 62 and counting, I will have plenty of time.
I will make a copy of your advice and will use it frequently as I finish the block sanding and reassemble my truck.
The picture of my passenger side door shows a bend, by the rear view mirror mount, that I need to correct. The picture of the drivers door shows how the top window frame was bent in.

[bmar]

The passenger side bend

[dsraven]

looks kinds like he drivers door got squashed as well above the lower window line, sorta pushed forward. would have to get that right so the glass fits and also that would affect the door fitment.

[bmar]

mr48chevy,
I had the same problem when I bought my Corvette years ago. Here is a picture of what it looked like when I bought it.

[bmar]

I have had the windows in the door and I was able to straighten the frame enough to get the windows to roll up and down. I had power windows for a while, but they never did work right, so I switched back over to manual windows.

[bmar]

Made some seat brackets for my 1957. I have the seats from my 1995 Chevy Blazer, that has a rod knock, and I will be installing them into my truck. I installed gussets on the brackets for strength and so most any seat can be installed.

[bmar]

I made the brackets to use all of the existing attachments from the original bench seat, except, there are no mounting points in the middle of the front factory seat. I had planned on drilling through the floor and bolting the brackets on the front, but the spot I drilled didn't go all the way through.
I had heard of rivet style nuts, that are compression fittings, but I had never used one. I found a kit on Amazon and ordered one and it arrived yesterday. I am wishing now I had bought one years ago. The rivets worked great and are eay to install, beats trying to weld a nut to the bottom of the cab.

[bmar]

Center console bracket