Tip for sagging doors

[sladey]

Firstly a disclaimer and apology - sorry if you already know this and sorry if it's elsewhere on the site and I've missed it. More to the point if this cocks up your car it's your problem and not mine!

I'd read somewhere that if the doors on your 911 are sagging a bit then you can jack them up to sort it out. I tried it last night and it worked perfectly.

It only affected my drivers door but it was getting harder and harder to close, and when I crouched down next to the door handle I could see that it (the door) had dropped. Everything at the hinge end was tight - it would be worth making sure of that before you tried anything like this.

I opened the door about 15 degrees, and put a block of wood under the door and jacked it up slowly. I initially just jacked it a bit but became braver. I did it 3 times, checking it carefully after each time. It eventually finished up spot-on. If you are going to do it, take it steady.

I'm only passing it on because I lived with the problem for about a year and it only took me 20 minutes to fix it. If your car was structurally weak then this could cause problems, but then again if your car was structurally weak the doors are probably the least of your worries!

Cheers

Mark

[Barry]

Also, on some cars there are some spacer gaskets behind the (three bolted) hinge, i.e. between the hinge and A post. Worth checking these first.

From a door gap point of view, if you need to lift the rear of the door up, and you have a tight gap at the base of the door to A post, then worth making an extra gasket, and putting under the bottom hinge, if not just take the top gasket out, and see if that helps.

I remember seeing a short film on Lamborghini's being made: on the production line in the bodyshop were all these hairy chested Italians hanging off what looked like scaffold bars, levering the ill fitting panels into place: so if its good enough for a lambo ....

From my experience, its suprising how much of the car's weight you have to jack up, before you start tweaking the door (luckily the 911 was O.K., but I'm guilty of doing it on other projects).

[sladey]

I agree on the last point - I nearly had the wheels off the floor (i.e. most of suspension travel had been taken up)

[Nick Moss]

That is NOT the way to adjust your doors. There are special shims to fit behind the hinge plates and the latch on the B post. The latch is also adjustable in the B post

[Barry]

Sorry Nick! I think we are talking last chance saloon here, rather than first adjustment on a concours car (hence me highlighting the shims). Lets face it, it only works because something is being bent .... having said that, if you trawl around classic car bodyshops, a lot employ quite heavy 'tweaking' techniques, and that's before you start shortening and lengthening panels. Mind you I come from the Triumph TR world, where no two cars or panels were ever the same: put a standard panel on a standard car, and the chances always were that the two would not fit.

Thinking about it, wasn't there an ad for the BMW 2002 where they hung one from the outside of the (fully opened) doors? I remember a mate turning up with a completely rotten orange and rust example, where the drivers door literally had to be lifted by a couple of inches to get it closed: 'you can hang these by the doors, you know' he proudly said with a .