While driving to school, I noticed something that worries me. I already knew that the driver's door and front fender were not the original ones, so it must have had a small (or so i though) accident.

Today I noticed that on the drivers side, the gap between the dash pad and the door panel top plastic is very small (a few millimeters) while the same gap on the passenger side is about 1 centimeter. This could only mean one of two things. Either the dash pad is closer to the left side of the car, or the door is closer to the pad.

The second thing I noticed is that there is a gap that runs all along the bottom of the door between the door sill top edge and the door panel. I can stick my pinky finger in there (index finger in the middle) and touch the honeycomb pattern of the door sill bottom. The passenger side does not have this gap and the top of the door sill is flush with the door panel.

Should I be worried?

 

It just means that whomever fixed the car after the accident had no clue how to align doors/fenders. You may have to adjust it, which is a pain on any car.

 

Thanks for the reply. Hopefully its just a door adjustment that is necessary. Oh! A light bulb just lit up in my head! Could it be as simple as loosening some bolts where the door attaches to the frame and push the bottom part inwards, while pulling the top outwards? If so, that would be a relief knowing that im not driving around almost 2 tons of crooked metal.

 

It takes 2 people to do it. But it's tough to do. When I stripped an 83 firebird, it took forever to figure out how to get the door off, some bolts faces inward from the outside, and some faced outside, from the inside. You also would have to pull off the front fender. I changed a doorpin in my car, and trust me, you can't reach nothing at all.

 

I did my upper and lower door pins with out taking my fender off, so an adjustment should be easy, just loosen the bolts on the top, and have someone hold the door up, while you tighten the bolts back up.