What should I do with my doors?

[Mike Self]

I've gone both ways with door refurbishment on my two cars.  The '69's doors were very rusty along the bottom edge--only the skin fortunately, the door frame and its lip along the bottom edge were in good shape.  I was taking an auto body class so made new lower skins from cut down out of tolerance Camaro door skins that had been donated by the local Chevy assembly plant.  I installed 'em back in 1986 or 87 and they still look good--and you can't find the seam unless you take the upholstery panel off and look inside.  The 73's doors had only a couple of tiny spots in the trailing edge, so I welded 'em up with a MIG welder.  In both cases I rustproofed the heck out of the seam inside the door where the door's frame meets the skin.  

 

I did a story that included some additional details on refurbishing doors; PM me if you'd like a copy.

 

But your doors are definitely salvageable with minimum effort, and as has been pointed out, they fit a lot better than new doors.  

 

mike

[TobyB]

Here's what I would do:

 

cut away the lower seam.  Stop when I got to the end of the rust.

The door will oilcan something ferocious at this point.

Don't panic.

 

Repair the frame- weld in a new edge if needed.

 

Repair the outer skin.  It'll take a fold, and probably not very far up the door

to get to clean metal.  At THIS point, I'll be super- tweaky about oilcanning,

and making very few, very cold tack welds to pull things back to where they should be.

Old me would have done a lap joint.  

Me who's seen lap (joggle) joints rust over time would butt weld, 

also because adjusting the skin dimensions are easier with a butt weld.

It's slower.  But I feel better about it in the long run.

 

In no case would I try to 're- skin' because I have no faith in a new skin,

nor would I replace those doors.  They're in pretty good shape IF 

they turn out not to be all beaten up otherwise.

 

t

fixing isn't hard.  Once you're done.

[NYNick]

I took that sticker off my car very carefully before paint. It wasn't easy and it didn't come off perfectly. It now resides in my restoration book, along with all the other original stickers I could get off.

['76mintgrün'02]

It sounds like you are on the road to re-skinning, but I'll put this here anyway.  

 

The back corners of the doors have a pocket that holds dirt, which in turn holds moisture, which leads to rusty blisters.  I made a little wire hooked tool to clean the dirt out of the corners and pulled a lot of it out.  I wish I had done that the first time I was inside the doors, followed by WaxOyl of some sort.

 

All of this dirt came out of that one corner.

 

[Mike Self]

5 hours ago, '76mintgrün'02 said:

The back corners of the doors have a pocket that holds dirt, which in turn holds moisture, which leads to rusty blisters.  I made a little wire hooked tool to clean the dirt out of the corners and pulled a lot of it out.  I wish I had done that the first time I was inside the doors, followed by WaxOyl of some sort.

I took that a step further and drilled a small hole in the back side of that triangle--being very careful not to ding the skin when the drill broke through the back side.  I then cleaned out all the crap and doused the corner with anti-rust stuff.  Finally a cut a little round plug from a piece of electrical tape to cover the hole.  No one every notices, and after 20 plus years, no rust in those door corners.

 

mike