Triumph Spitfire Body Repair #14 - Door Fitment Problems Solved??

Solved? Not quite. Read and watch!

The more I thought about it and slept on it, I convinced myself that I was not as careful as I had hoped and allowed the A post to droop when attaching the lower A post. In an attempt to verify this, I used some shims and the rear burst plate and put the door to the body as straight as I could and looked at the hinge holes. Not pretty.

"Inside" the hinge hole...the dark metal is the threaded hole of the hinge plate, the lighter metal is the A post. Needs to come back and up a bit.

With that, I was off to the races. I used a spot weld chisel that I picked up on Amazon and went to town breaking my spot welds. It actually went pretty easily and I didn't do any major damage.

Strengthener separated from lower A post.

Inner sill and most of floor separated.

With the bottom A post detached from the bottom of the car, I had the ability to move it quite a bit. The trick now was getting the door placed and the body arranged to get the best fit that I could. I strap helped achieve this.

Strap pulling the top of the dash back a bit.

The gap at the back. Still a bit off.

Once I got it where I thought I should, I used a few vise-grips to hold it in place and checked the fit. I did this several times.

Temporary attachment...checking fitment.

Once I was happy, I welding it back in.

Welded back together.

And on the inside. A few holes to fix, still.

That was about as good as I could do with what I had to work with. It's still not perfect, though, so we'll see how it goes.