57 356 A mild resto

[merbesfield]

[merbesfield]

[merbesfield]

More advice needed. Trying to break all these questions up into separate posts. Because the old patch was huge/thick, they must have adjusted the door bc the bottom is now about 4mm back from the original rocker/threshold. How do I adjust the bottom edge of the door out? I know weather strip will push a little, but not this much. The top edges of the door are perfect. It is only the bottom that needs to come out.

[John Pierce]

Hi Mark,

It looks like the door metal shrank during welding due to the heat, which is very common. It needs to be stretched to bring it out. You can definitely hammer and dolly a weld. The issue you have to be careful about is stretching too much resulting in oil-canning though.

The bottom edge of the door is a different issue. As the front, rear, and top of the door fit well then you have a contour problem due to welding it in that location. The only fix would be to cut the bottom edge, bring it out and reweld it, unfortunately. Sorry about that.

Good luck,

John

[JTR70]

That lower door skin patch will try your patience. Unavoidable heat warp just wreaks havoc with such a near flat unsupported run. Then compound it by not getting past all the old damage? This is pretty much the outcome you can expect every time Mark. The only way I can realistically see raising that weld joint and getting a stable panel is to heat shrink the entire run with a torch. Cold shrinking with a hammer dolly would be nearly impossible and it will "oil can" all over the place. You won't be able to torch heat it from the outside either. If you touched that with a torch from the outside it would go crazy and sink in deeper. You have to be able to both heat and hammer it from the inside but you now have the frame of the door in your way.
In a perfect world the easiest way to address that would be clamp the skin to a welding table then heat shrink the run at will. You don't have that luxury at this point so you're stuck with spooning it out the best that you can. OR start over again, cut it back out and make your own lower section and go higher into the door crown which will get you past all the old damage and will proved a much more stable welding area.

As for the lower alignment issues your having I learned the hard way that each time you add a new piece especially substructer you have to repeatedly test fit it to the car and make sure its within striking distance (also taking the thickness of the eventual skin thickness into account) before you commit to welding it all together fully. You might get lucky every blue moon and hit it right on the money but that hasn't happened to me yet. John is right, you'll have to relief cut the door bottom just ahead of this flange and pull it out level and then back fill it. Like I said this stuff will "test your metal" excuse the pun...
Justin

33

[merbesfield]

[JTR70]

Yeah, that was another hard learned lesson of mine too. I'd get impatient and tack weld, then weld two sections together knowing they were not in the optimal position or alignment to start with and I remember telling myself, I'll just hammer it out later. The problem I'd soon find is that the weld firmly locked in the undesired angle or feature and I'd end up beating the hell out of the surface trying to correct it but with only mixed results. The panel normally ended up stretched, and with numerus trigger points along joint causing all sorts of waves and irregularities. "oil canning" soon developed as I tried chasing those out. Life is so much less complicated when its set where its needed or wanted from the first tack-weld. If you're going to try and salvage it make the correction change to the bottom first. If go after the skin first the tension angle will change again as you move the bottom out and you'll probably end up having to restabilize the surface once again. Keeping my fingers crossed for you Mark!

[Red911]

Hi Mark,

Your work is professional.

Your questions are my questions on my '64 Bali Blue door repair. I support your efforts and maybe we can play off each other to make our doors work.

My door skin depression is much worse as it was stressed due to an accident in two places.

Keep the faith.

Tom

[John Pierce]

Mark. At this point I would recommend cutting out the welded in section along with any thinned and pitted metal above that region so you can make a new panel and weld it to good metal. Take a look how I did it on my build. I used Bruce Baker's technique and it came out nicely. Tom Perazzo has a blog on how to do it on the ABCGT homepage also.

Good luck.

John

[Red911]

Hi Mark,

Not to disagree with John, do you think that a stud welder might pull the depression out for you?

Again, I am a 2 out of 5 restorer, unlike John or Justin. Just my $.02.

Tom

[merbesfield]

[merbesfield]

Link to video. https://youtu.be/dnZ_tm5jLOw

[merbesfield]

https://youtu.be/dnZ_tm5jLOw

[merbesfield]

Short day at shop. But glad I figured the door out. I started disassembly of Drivers side door. Got it gutted and ready for rust repair. While plotting my course of action I confirmed that the bottom repair piece supplied by Restoration Design is not correct exactly like the Passenger side was. Except I caught this one before having it on the car where last time I did the revision on the car. The bottom piece is about 3mm too narrow at the widest portion of the part. I will have to slice it, open it to correct dimension to fit my car and then weld back up. Same as I did on PS. I also have to move some of the window frame holes over about 4-5mm to match original. I guess with all these cars being hand built back in the day this is all normal. Next trip to shop will be adjusting new piece and starting the process of cutting out old metal and fitting new.

[Red911]

Hi Mark,

I misunderstood your issue. I thought where you welded the lower door skin on, there was a valley. You clarified that the door bottom was in due to the door shims from the PO. Therefore, my recommendation is unnecessary. Sorry about my confusion.

Tom