Door alignment

[fastricky]

Hi all, the top of the passenger door protrudes out further than the hood which I'm sure is contributing to wind noise. I understand I have to loosen the hinge from inside the door to realign, and to get to that remove the interior door panel. Because the last step of the panel removal is a PITA (top chrome strip that is clipped in place), is it possible to just keep the panel in place having removed all the knobs, armrest, clips so that it can swing away enough from the door for me to access the hinge bolts or is that wishful thinking and does the panel need to come completely off?

[adawil2002]

Panel needs to come off. If you bend too much you'll detach the pinched metal upper from the fiberboard or plywood door card. Then it's a floppy PIA to remove when needing to remove the panel again.

 

You'll also have to peel back & replace the water barrier behind the door card which should  be adhered to the door. 

[fastricky]

Dang, ok thx!

[fastricky]

BTW for anyone interested:

 

1. The block of wood trick to remove the door card worked a treat.

2. You cannot adjust the door hinge to move away from the body or in towards the body, only forward, backwards, up and down.

[tjones02]

If you need the door closer or further away from the car, you can add or remove shims from between the door and hinge.

 

If you need to adjust the door up, down or closer or further from the B-pillar, pick a bolt you want to pivot the door on and don't loosen that one nearly as much as the others. Then pick another bolt and make a different adjustment. Always hold the majority of the weight of the door with a padded floor jack and at least one bolt.

[fastricky]

51 minutes ago, tjones02 said:

If you need the door closer or further away from the car, you can add or remove shims from between the door and hinge.

 

If you need to adjust the door up, down or closer or further from the B-pillar, pick a bolt you want to pivot the door on and don't loosen that one nearly as much as the others. Then pick another bolt and make a different adjustment. Always hold the majority of the weight of the door with a padded floor jack and at least one bolt.

 

Good advice thx ? My door sits too far out just behind the hood - there were no spacers so nowhere else for the door to move inwards. Instead, I bent the hood slightly and now they meet at the same level more or less. Will drive on the highway tomorrow and see if there's any difference in the wind noise from that side of the car.

[tjones02]

Yes, adjusting the hood is another way. ?

[TobyB]

To move the door in, you can move the back of the hood over.

And then bring the fender out.

 

And then re- square the hood.

 

And then move the fender again.

 

And then bend the fender mount lip a bit.

 

And also bend the door hinge mounts in the door.

 

Or just live with it.

 

t

 

[VWJake]

Doesn’t the blue book tell you to smack the welded portion of the hinge w a bfh? That’s what I did on my Chamonix ‘73 anyway.

[David Layton]

While I have the window and latch innards in the door, I do not want to seal and finish until I am totally happy with the mounting.  The doors are both askew and sticking out on the lower outside corners and the drivers is striking the rain gutter.  As there is no "in-out" adjustment on the hinge, what do you recommend?  How were these adjusted in production?

 

Thanks!

[esty]

the best answer to aligning doors is patience and persistence...and as usual a helper makes it a lot easier

 

[TobyB]

Shim your upper hinge out about 3/16" and try again.

It looks like your door is canted inward, just from the pix.

 

Once you get the alignment right to the rear profile, slide the fender out to match.

 

Then realign the hood to follow that.

 

IF the hood then looks good on both sides, you're golden.

 

When it doesn't, you then get to fuss it back and forth and back and forth until it sorta does.

 

I have had trouble with (factory replacement from pre 1996) doors hitting the front gutter, too.

On the car I cared about, I reprofiled the door slightly, and rewelded it.

On the track car, I hit the gutter with a dead- blow hammer.

 

t

 

 

[David Layton]

Thanks Toby!  

 

Assume that I need to put the shim through the inside surface of the door between the hinge and the outer door.  The hinge goes into a blind cavity. Otherwise, I would have stuck a washer between the hinge and the panel the bolt goes through.

 

Wonder how they did this at the factory.  I looked at my copy of the 'blue' dealer shop manual.  It simply tells the mechanic to mark the hinge and bolt locations before disassembly.

 

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by David Layton

[Buckeye]

[TobyB]

Yeah, David, the shims stack in between the hinge and the door.

It's an iterative process- you try something, it doesn't do exactly

what you'd hoped, so you try something a little different...

 

I have used washers taped together with a long tab of tape to get them aligned.

 

And it's by no means imperative to use 3 even stacks- I've played around

with different height to move the position of the hinge pin relative to the door itself.

I SEEM to remember that you can use fender washers on 2 of the 3 bolts to spread the

load, but it's been a long time, and I remember fussing with a lot of options...

 

I've seen a shim or 2 in there, but I don't know if the factory bothered- or just hit it

with a hammer.  Watching some of the production line videos, panel fit wasn't as

tight as we now tend to make it.

 

If your door is aligned up- down the way you'd like it,

drilling a 1/8" alignment hole through the hinge and mounting pad

will save you a LOT of time in shimming.  You may not end up using

it exactly, but it's really nice having a 'home' position when the whole thing

slips and you lose what was a 'pretty good' alignment.

 

t