Door Adjustment

[68spitfire]

Hi all,

 

Been tinkering with the car today and decided that the doors need a little adjustment.

 

I have shims under the hinge to body mounting points that give me in-out and top to bottom alignment.

 

I also realise that I have a little front to back adjustment in this area to.

 

What I was wondering, as I cannot remember and cannot see any images on a google search is do the hinges where they fit to the door have any adjustment or were they bolted straight into weld-nuts in the door, so no adjustment?

 

Years since I had it all part for restoration and something I cannot remember without taking a hinge off.

 

Regards,

 

Rich.

[John Bonnett]

Hi Rich,

 

There is adjustment where the hinges bolt to the doors. This allows the door to be moved in or out in relation to the sill. You will need to drop out the check strap clevis pin so that you can open the door wide enough to access the countersunk screw in each hinge. I removed them and left them out until the adjustment had been made and the hex head set screws nipped up. I then refitted them.

 

I hope that helps

 

rgds

 

John

[68spitfire]

Hi John,

 

Many thanks for the info.

 

Been that long since I had a door totally stripped I could not remember the setup.

interestingly I could not see a separate threaded plate for inside the door on the parts list, hence me thinking it was just weld-nuts and no adjustment there.

 

Anyway, something to play with next weekend.

 

Thanks.

 

Rich.

[Pete Lewis]

The base idea of the screws vs the hex setscrews was the screw is nipped to

hold the door and allow some degree of shift on the caged plates, once happy with the flush/tapers

the remaining bolts would be tightend

 

this design was common practice on many diferent marques bear in mind the track would have had

lumps of wood , padded bats and big mallets to achieve a 'fit' with a deal of whack it, bend it

No robot or tooling with 0.5 mm gap tolerances

[John Bonnett]

That's interesting Pete. Thank you for that.

[Pete Lewis]

didnt say it would work  !!!!

 

      not so much these days with more costly tooling but a visit down a body in white line would have made you cringe

       in fact on a bmw mini production production recently it managed to show a guy stick a  mallet into the hinge shut to effect a fit by giving the door a good shove 

         maybe nothing changes 

 

                  remember door fit tolerances in th 70s was   3mm flush 8mm taper was considered ok 

 

                         Pete