Richard Baines

Thanks again Chris, makes a lot of sense. Your approach is pretty much what I have been planning on doing, I think the issue I have had is just forcing the stretch specifically without lifting the whole car off the jackstands instead. I have so little weight in the car, it's just an empty shell and chassis. So I will have another go before separating that seam, but with a lot more ballast added. The way I've cut the A post and unbolted the front of the floor, it definitely is just the front floor/bulkhead seam holding things together. On the passenger side I'm working on, the only thing I know to be correct for door fit is the door itself. It's a NOS Unipart one. Like you my plan is to get the rear door to rear wing gap right, then the front of the door to bonnet gap, then see where the lower gap is. It's impressive that you even managed to get the bottom door to sill gap correct with minimal fuss, most restorations I've seen still struggle with that one. But then again I suspect they're not paying as much attention to the A post position as you have.

Great work @ChrisJ. I'm trying to sort a similar problem with my Spitfire and have come to the same conclusion as you. The door fit wasn't right. An outer sill and a-post repair, plus a later floor and inner sill replacement (off the chassis), had set the bulkhead in the wrong place. I reckon it needs to come up about 1cm or so for the door gap at the rear wing to be correct. Did you have any issues with the floor attachment at the front when you jacked the A post repair panel up? (i.e the front floor/bulkhead seam lifting up away from where it needs to be) I'm at the point now where to fix mine, I think I will need to separate the seam at the front of the floor where it meets the front bulkhead panel. Everything else is loose but I can't seem to jack it up independently as long as the floor is attached.

Fair enough! Just thought I'd throw the suggestion out there to spark up some conversation, I'm not particularly fussed either way. Agree that if the board is moderated well it's not really an issue.

On the old site, the shop prices were always higher, unless you logged in as a club member to qualify for the member price. Is this still the case, or are the prices on shop products the same as what they'd be if you phoned up as a member?

Feel free to shoot this one down, but how about making a mandatory requirement that people set their display names to their full real name? Arguments and trolling on message boards tends to be more prevalent when people hide behind pseudonyms, and having people's real names tends to bring more of a sense of friendliness and sensibility to a forum (though can't guarantee it!!).