Door Alignment with Roll Cage?

[CJM72]

I need some guidance regarding door alignment. I've read what seems like a dozen door alignment threads, but I have a couple of unique circumstances that have me confused. First of all, I'm trying to realign my poorly hung driver's door while I have the front clip off for my swap. The door hangs low in the back and the previous owner was using the latch to attempt to pull it up.

Here's the circumstances. The previous owner bought the K5 about 2.5 years ago and proceeded to fix most of the major rust issues (rockers, floor patches, torque boxes) and gave it a satin black paint job. I jumped on this Blazer because it was basically rust free, but ran like crap and leaked from just about every possible location. The body mounts must have been replaced with LMC rubber mounts around that time and the driver's side door is a cut down (non-72) truck door. The truck also has a cage bolted in to the floor. Sooooo, with reasonably new body mounts, a replacement door, an installed roll cage.....what's the best course of action here? Do I have to remove the cage before I can start moving things? I know I should grab my top and bolt that on, but it might be difficult to do that in its current state.

I ordered new mounts from Wes at Classic Heartbeat, but that's before I realized it already has LMC mounts. I'm still going to compare and see if the LMC's are already collapsing. I believe the previous owner patched up the floors and rockers without the doors or top installed. I can't tell if he welded in some structure before cutting it up, but I doubt it.

My gut says that I need to shim the A pillar up and slide the door up and back. The A pillar body mounts already have a 1/4" of shims installed for a total height of 1.25". The passenger side hangs quite a bit better with the original door. That mount is also 1.25" total, but that door looks decent.

[hemi43]

Here's what I did because I had the same problem. Even though you have a roll cage, it wont matter because your windshield header doesn't seem to be fastened to it.
I used a 10 ton hydraulic jack with a 4 foot extension. I bolted one end on the header using the holes that the top bolts on, and I bolted the other end using the rear mounting holes for the front seat. Make sure you don't have a windshield in because you will break it !!
Start slowly by increasing the pressure on the jack, and you will push the header outwards. There will be lots of springback, and when I did mine I actually moved the header 1.5 to 2 inches outwards before it came back to an acceptable position.
This might sound crude, but it works. My gaps are perfect now!
Trying to fix what you have with shims will be a waste of time.

[CJM72]

Wow, that sounds aggressive. I could measure and compare to my passenger side to see if it's leaned back. Are you suggesting the windshield frame is bent back, or that the whole A pillar has fallen back from having the rocker replaced without support?

[Blazerowner]

I’ve seen this problem before and I think people suggested jacking the body up on the body mounts near the rear of the doors. This is the first I’ve heard the method described above. Usually sag is from the rocker boxes being bad, rusty, etc.
That said the previous owner may have fixed them out of alignment. I believe the boxes are reproduced now.

[CJM72]

Hemi, I took some measurements from the step in the floor up to the top and bottom of the windshield frame last night. Both sides were nearly identical, so I'm starting to think most of the problems are coming from the cut down truck door and body mount shimming. I wonder if the window frame on the truck door is not only bowed, but at the wrong angle. Probably time to measure everything: door opening, window frame angle, etc. !

[briank]

Ill throw this out there ...dont think I saw it mentioned but does the door have new hinge pins and bushings? Worn out ones may cause the door to sag.

[ClassicStyle]

Shim the b pillar.

That will pull the door gap open.


I take that back, you door gap looks even, the whole door is low and the rocker gap is un even?
I wonder if the issue is the in the outer rocker placement

Where are the gaps tight?

[CJM72]

Briank, the door hinges are new so I don't believe the bushings are worn out. I'll double check that tho.

ClassicStyle, when the door is unlatched the B pillar gap is even but too big. The windshield to door gap is ok; but window door frame appears bowed in along the middle. The rocker gap seems tight. Possibly a little tighter at B pillar, but hard to tell right now. I think I'll pull the latch and see where the door sits naturally. It appears 1/4" low at the B pillar. Hoping I can split that between moving door up and shimming up A pillar.

[hemi43]

It's not the pillar that's sagged backwards, but the whole front cowl. It's just what these truck do after almost 50 years especially if they've had rocker work done. The doors will tell you where the header needs to be. If your door is still too low at the back, and your 1/4 window frame is touching the windshield header (A frame), then the only remedy is to push that A frame back where it should be. Of course this is done with bolts that hold the body to the frame loosened off. Once the header is back in position, then you can realign the body mounts with the proper shim pack.

[CJM72]

Well, I decide to try moving the door up and to the back just to see if I had any adjustment there. Good News is I think I should be able to move the door back to where I need it. Bad news is I couldn't ge the door more than a 1/16" higher. These are replacement hinges. Do you guys find you need to hog out the holes on these hinges to get more adjustment sometimes? I'm no body man, so I'm way out of my comfort zone here.

After that, I decided to loosen up the body mounts on the drivers side to see what would happen. When I jack up the A pillar, the whole body is lifting. For better or worse, I think the cage is holding the body in it's current alignment. I couldn't get the door alignment to change much at all. I'll have to see if I can unbolt the cage and get some adjustment back.

So question for the group. Since the replacement drivers door was obviously moved around, should I focus on the door or the body mounts first?

[ClassicStyle]

Get as much as you can with the doors, see what’s left after that

[CJM72]

The hinge bushings are shot. I thought they had been replaced, but these appear to be the original hinges. There was an old set in the box I got with the Blazer, but they must have been off the donor door. You know what they say when you assume!

I'll rebuild the hinges, elongate the holes and report back on my progress. If I have to adjust the body mount shims, the cage is going to have to be unbolted at the very least. Thanks for the advice so far. This place is the best.