Thread: C5 gto
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Old 07-07-2017, 08:59 PM
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heinke heinke is offline
MetalShaper of the Month Jan 2018
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Prescott, AZ
Posts: 487
Post Drivers door – door skin attached

I finally had a chance to get the driver’s side door skin attached. Given what I’d learned from the passenger door, I had to put quite a bit more work into the upper front and back portions of the inner door frame prior to putting on the skin. These areas needed to be re-enforced and more solid in order to provide a good clamping surface for the hem that holds the door skin in place. Next time I build inner door frames, I’ll know to do this from the start.

Once the door frame preparation was completed, attaching the skin was pretty much the same experience as for the passenger door. The result however, was better. Prior to putting on the car, I measured the door skin for crown. The crown looks even and good.



The main improvement is that the door gap is an even 3/16” all the way around. The temporary bracing did the trick to keep the inner frame from flexing while I was hammering the skin over it. Here’s the door mounted in place.



I did find two other clearance issues when opening the door. The door front edge rubs on the front fender door pocket as the door is being opened and the door stop within the hinge doesn’t engage until after the door skin contacts the fender edge on full open. For the first issue, I ground away some door pocket fiberglass until no more rub. For the second, I needed to weld a ¼” tab on the door stop so the door wouldn’t open quite so far. Luckily, I noticed this before opening door all the way as it could have put a vertical crease in the nice new door skin. Both issues fixed.

I had to make some adjustments for matching the body surface surrounding the door. Like passenger door, the upper front corner needed to be raised and in addition, about half the bottom edge needed to be raised about 1/16”. Once these adjustments were done, the door now looks good in profile.



Every so often, I like to get the GTO out of the garage so I can step back and see how is it looks from more than 5 feet back. Now that the doors are in place, I decided to push the GTO outside to check out the body flow. Wow, gotta love those flowing lines!



Next up, I plan to tackle the trunk lid.
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