The door from hell...

[Wisconsin_Snake]

Ok, I posted this long ago regarding that my driver’s side door was malformed as I could not get it to fit properly at the top. DV explaned to me that who ever put the door together basically squished top down to hard.





Per as instructed by DV, the way forward was to cut the door apart. In the meantime I went forward and worked on other areas of the car.
It took me a long time to work the guts to go ahead and do it. Basically it meant that I had to cut the inside side molding off and then more scarier part, skinning the outside door skin from the inside body





So I researched on the internet as to the best way skin the top part of the door. While doing that I came across a youtube video stating that using a cut off wheel was a great way to cut through fiberglass.
Much more exact than using a sawzall or body saw (for straight cuts)
Let the cutting begin…





Here you can see how flat the top of the door was pushed down too much (towards the front it’s supposed to flair up) but this is flat across.



Here you can see last area I was able to cut into the door before I had to abandon the cut off wheel and switch the unwieldy sawzall where I would have to try to have the blade hug the inside of the door skin but not go through… As you can see second pic going up, there was a allot resin gooped on both ends of the door making the task that much more tricky.

Here is a pic of the area that I had to travel along with the sawblade to get to a point where I can lift the skin to where it should be. (The orange line indicated what I had to cut. )

As you can see I was able to get up close and go right along the edge.



Result: Here is pic of the door with a piece of wood temporarily placed to lift the skin to where it should be.




Here is a side view of what it looks like now…
Note that I went back and redid the mounting plate so I was able raise the front of the door a little bit closing the gap on the front part of the door. Not shown here.
Boy is it nice to have the body of the car flow into the door without a ¼ inch drop.