04-01-2021, 03:21 PM
This is not an answer to your problem but it does give a feel for the problems that came my way through naivety and inexperience.
I purchased my ARQ all in pieces, before I took the body off the chassis and before I removed any of the worm infested metal which was effectively all of the lower 6 to 10” of bodywork and floor pan, I put in rigid steel bracing and only removed small sections of metal at any one time, to minimise any movement.......or so I thought!
When I had completely weld repaired the body shell and floor pan with good metal I trial fitted the unrestored doors onto their hinges to work out what I needed to do. Much to my horror the doors were fouling at the top of the door frame at the front and rear of each door. When I aligned the door/body moulding and set the gap at the rear of the door, I found there was a gap at the front of the door that went from nothing at the moulding to was as much as 5/8” at the bottom of the door.
Obviously there had been some serious movement of the shell, now whether this was already there before my work or was already there, I simply do not know. What I had not done was check the door fit prior to all my work on the body shell, mea culpa.
It took a lot of work and soul searching to increase the door width from the body moulding down to the bottom and trim the top of the doors to fit the frames, but it worked in the end.
Once finished the body line did match initially but as time has gone on the drivers door has sunk again and this has been adjusted with tapered shims at the bottom hinge, and that is where we are now.
Denis S
I purchased my ARQ all in pieces, before I took the body off the chassis and before I removed any of the worm infested metal which was effectively all of the lower 6 to 10” of bodywork and floor pan, I put in rigid steel bracing and only removed small sections of metal at any one time, to minimise any movement.......or so I thought!
When I had completely weld repaired the body shell and floor pan with good metal I trial fitted the unrestored doors onto their hinges to work out what I needed to do. Much to my horror the doors were fouling at the top of the door frame at the front and rear of each door. When I aligned the door/body moulding and set the gap at the rear of the door, I found there was a gap at the front of the door that went from nothing at the moulding to was as much as 5/8” at the bottom of the door.
Obviously there had been some serious movement of the shell, now whether this was already there before my work or was already there, I simply do not know. What I had not done was check the door fit prior to all my work on the body shell, mea culpa.
It took a lot of work and soul searching to increase the door width from the body moulding down to the bottom and trim the top of the doors to fit the frames, but it worked in the end.
Once finished the body line did match initially but as time has gone on the drivers door has sunk again and this has been adjusted with tapered shims at the bottom hinge, and that is where we are now.
Denis S