Door Gap Nightmare

[1972_911t]

Ive spent most of today trying to sort out issues ive been having with me door gaps and what ever I do I just carnt seem to get them anywhere near what they should be.

First of all I was stugling with getting the door to line up with the 1/4 I had a big gap at th etop and small gap at the bottom, to try to solve this I raised up the door and used a inge shimm under the top hinge to tilt the door inline with the 1/4 then I tried it with the window frame fitted which hits the body in the top front corner but the lower corner is a mile away from the body. I tried to get the window frames to line up with the opening without been attached to the doors and couldnt get them anything like, its like ive completly lost the shape of my door openings. Im now getting worried that the body has warped when I replaced my sills but carnt imagine how it could have changed shape in this way with just the sills removed.

Heres some pics;





The other alternative is that im totaly useless at setting up door gaps, but I never had this trouble last time I had them off. Any advice apreciated.

Steve

[davidppp]

Hello Steve.

This is a big issue with the 911's I've messed with..even just changing sills often ends up out of whack..

The quarters will also have moved as a result of the flares..

The most cost-effective job is to find a pukka jig..you will have a shock..trust me!

It will almost certainly need a pull/jack..the trick is to get the doors right while also getting the suspension right..

Good luck..
PS, I'll take those MFI bits please, for cash if necessary..it will save me time and money in the end..!

Kind regards
david

[Nick Moss]

This is an effect of the oven paint removal process and requires jacking the door apertures.

[1972_911t]

Hi Nick

Im not sure if i took mine to the same place you used but they claim there process dosent use heat, a completly chemical process. He did say some of the chemicals are heated but not sure to what temperature. This does seem more likely though than it been a product of sill removal because the doors were on when I fitted the sills and although I only checked the bottom of the door when ligning up the sills I didnt notice any problems with the doors closing afterwards or the frame catching.

Steve

[Nick Moss]

Surface Processing in Dudley?

[1972_911t]

Yeah

[1972_911t]

Have you had similar problems from the cars you have had done?

[Nick Moss]

yes, the solution is jacking, but prevention is better than cure.

[Barry]

Is there a prevention for this yet Nick, or is this something under development? I would imagine with heat-induced movement it's going to be tricky coming up with something that's reliably going to counteract the heat effects .

I wonder if you'd almost have to come up with some sort of tempory internal roll cage-like structure? Or I suppose door and screen aperture 'X' pieces might help?

Feel bad for you Steve: not the sort of thing you want to discover at this stage. I think Nick's talking about using a Porta-Power (copy)? If that's the case, even a four ton would do it, but the ten ton's are a bit more sturdy. They are usually on flea bay for not much dollar and can be sold afterwards. I bought one to do the TR (£81) and it's been so useful I wouldn't want to be without it now. At some point I'll get some RSJ offcuts and make a press adaptor for it as well ....

[Barry]

David: I agree about the jig, and have now got a couple of contacts for hiring one by the week with appropriate brackets. The current project would have been made easier with a jig, but frankly at the time we didn't realise that I could have got one here without having to resort to buying one. Would have saved a lot of measuring .

Where do you jack then Nick? I keep looking at it and can't picture which way the P-Power would need to go to correct this .

[Barry]

Steve: those door frames are definitely back exactly in their original places, or could they be shifted slightly?

Also any pictures including the front wing gaps?

P.S. I would imagine that if you did the sills one at a time, with the car well supported, and the mechanics out of it, you'd have been hard pushed to warp the car this badly: perhaps a wee bit (which is why you should do a full panel fit-up before final welding of sills, ideally), but otherwise I'm sure it wouldn't have been that.

[1972_911t]

Looks to me that it would need jacking from the back lower corner upto the front top corner, its like the screen surround has tilted back and down but at the same time it seems the A post has tilted forward a bit hence the bigger door gap at the top and smaller at the botom of the doors. Maybe the tilting of the front of the car forwards has resulted in pulling down the roof and screen surround?


I wont be attempting to do the jacking ill leave that to the bodyshop now. The one thing that concerns me is loss of strength from this, do you think it will lose strength?

Steve

[Nick Moss]

Surface Processing are investigating the cause, but IMO the only preventative cure is to support the shell on a jig when its in the oven and/or a form of cage to maintain the shell shape. If a 911 is lifted on a 4 point lift, as opposed to supported on its wheels, the doors frames distort, so imagine what happens if the shell is resting on a pallet or similar then heated to 400C

[Gary71]

Steve, real shame this, the body look superb .

I'm really struggling to get my head round the distortion that would give rise to this. Looking at your photos, particularly the RHS of the car, it looks as if the distance between the top rear corner of the door and the sill has grown. This is where I'm struggling as the roof is well constrained in this location vertically by the B pillar and fore aft by the rear quarter / C pillar. Jacking the door aperture to restore this shape looks a challenge as I can only see it giving rise to a bent roof. Guess there is something I'm missing

The door (not the window frame) doesn't look too bad. Can you align the rear edge of the door with the quarter panel and then fit the front wing?
The door frames look like they are angled in too much from these pictures and too deep into the aperture. If you can fit the door itself I would imagine the rest can be contained with adjustment / modification of the window frames. Do you have the little right angled bracket on the bottom of the window channel, as you probably know this can slide in and out to angle the frames.

Is it possible the frames have been distorted during removal / storage?

Really hope you can solve this. If is does require jacking at least you found it before applying paint

[davidppp]

Morning chums.

I too was a bit surprised at just how flexible the 911 is.

Amazingly, perhaps, sills can be done quite well with no bracing etc..but the car needs to be on its wheels with engine in place!

The usual supporting via front crossmember and rear torsion tube, with engine out, does not reproduce the stresses of normal use.

If you actually carefully measure, it is possible to do everything without a Jig, as Barry did, and I have done in the past (!).

But with the jig ( we have acquired one now), its so much quicker and easier to guarentee ...

Re Surfac Processiong, the use of cross bracing should be the answer..x braces in the doors , plus between both b-posts, and possible also the a-pillars to keep the screen flame square.

In the Porsche Factory manuals they show a set of frame jigs for the apertures..I plan to make these Real Soon Now from a perfect shell I have..they will be invaluable..

Kind regards
David

Kind regards
David