33 Coupe Paint 30        11/12/05

While I was installing the interior, things were going pretty good....till I put the door panels on and tried to close the doors. I wondered why they didn't fit right because before things were painted, everything fit great. Now the doors won't open with my keyless entry remote anymore and I needed to find out why. I tried playing with the hinges, adjusting them every way I could think of but the doors still wouldn't open or close right. Then while I was playing with the bottom hinge, I noticed the door panel looked funny. If you look close, the bottom corner has been squished.....but why? 
 

 

 

Then it hit me after thinking about it. The rocker panel had been fixed by my painter because of a problem earlier in the build and once he was finished, that area was now sticking out farther than it was before. 

Let's go back in time a little. When I was installing the body a couple of years ago, I was having trouble with it sitting all the way down on the chassis. The reason that it didn't want to fit was because the body was hitting the chassis in one area. That area needed clearance so I started grinding away on the underside of the body, equally from both sides till I had enough room for the body too fit correctly. Once the body was all bolted up, I had myself a nice hole in the rear of both rocker panels. That silver color that you see is my chassis (red arrow). I had to grind so much material away that it went through this area and it would have to be fixed at a later date to which my painter said "no problem". Once the body was off, I reminded him about it again and he took care of it. That area had to be built up from the outside and once he was finished, it was sticking out farther than before so this made for a door panel clearance problem. 

So now when I close the doors, there's no clearance between the rocker panel and door panel in those areas. This was causing the door to open and close very hard so I had to come up with a way to fix it. 
 

 

 

I sat inside the car too see exactly where it was hitting and sure enough, there was zero clearance, but only in that small area that had been fixed. What I needed to do was make some more clearance between the door panel and rocker panel. Removing material from the rocker panel was out of the question so this meant the door panel was going to get hacked.
 

 

 

My plan was to remove the leather from the corner of the door panel and sand down the foam to produce clearance between the two (just like I did the top of the door panel). I figured that this fix wouldn't be too noticeable once I was finished because it was at the bottom rear corner. I used the same technique for fixing this area as I did the top of the door panels, which meant brushing on the glue and then reattaching the material.
 

 

  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29
30  31  32  33  34  35