acole88

Hello. I dont post here very often but ive come across something that has me stumped. Ive replaced a door on my 84 t/a and in order to get the thing adjusted proper I have to leave one bolt out of each hinge. Now this would not bother most people but I am not most people and I figure there must be a way to have some adjustment with these two extra bolts installed. Surely not every door installed on these cars uses the exact same adjustment. Is there something I am missing here?

nosajwols

iTrader: (1)

Make sure the car is sitting on the suspension. If it is not (you did not indicate if you have it up in the air or not) you will never get the doors right.

acole88

Thanks for the input. The car is infact sitting on its wheels. All new suspension as well so I cant imagine it has anything to do with the car not sitting properly.

An update: Ive tried two different doors not including the original door that came off. The two doors I tried ended up leaving the same gap at the rear edge when they were all bolted into place. One door was from an 89 gta the other was from an 86 iroc. Both doors left a 1/2" gap at the rear. The only way to adjust them properly was to leave the third bolt out of each hinge.

So to answer my question from earlier and hopefully help someone else in the future, the reason there is no adjustment with the third bolt in is because the bolt threads into a backing plate inside the pillar. This backing plate is spot welded into place. If you take a look at the plate itself it appears as if the doors are fitted to the car and adjusted and the plate is tacked into place with spot welds, locking the door into place so the doors cant fall out of adjustment. If you remove the door from the car you are able to drill these spot welds. They are difficukt to see but scuffing the metal with sandpaper highlights the spotweld. You can then drill the spotweld with a 7/16 bit and use a punch to knock the plate off the back. I did this tonight and my door is on and adjusted using all 6 bolts. I just need to fill these holes I drilled in with weld to lock thise plates back into place.

nosajwols

iTrader: (1)

Could be the odd-ball was the original door since the other two fit the same as each other. If you had to you could oblong the hole in the hinge, might be easier than drilling the spot welds.

On mine I have 92 doors on an 82. They bolted right up once we figured out what we were doing wrong... I had the car up on jack stands, they were on the axle in the back but on the frame near the control arms on the front. The front jack stands put the doors out quite a bit, that is why I always go here first... Once on the suspension (once we figured it out) they lined right up.

acole88

That was the conclusion I came to as well, the original door perhaps being mis-shaped. After I bolted the new door on and had in in adjustment I noticed that the new door would jam into the striker at the rear. The reason it was jamming into the striker was because there were four shims stacked below the striker bolt to stand it out for the old door. Removed a couple shims so there are now two and all is good. Hard to explain but it almost seems like the door skin on the old door was slid back on the door frame. The frame itself would be a little further ahead requiring the hinges to be pinned ahead a bit allowing the door skin to line up at the rear for good gap. That would explain the pile of striker bolt shims at the rear.

Perhaps they just didnt have the tolerances down to what we are used to seeing today when they made these doors?