This is on a 2dr HT. So I have the body bolted to the frame and trying to adjust the body with shims under the donuts to get the doors to hang right before welding new front floor pans in. I don't know if the body is bent from a wreck at some time, it would be helpful if there was factory dimensions for the body shops when these cars were new. I did a search on this forum but no luck in the service bulletins.
Have you adjusted the hinges inside the side panel? Not only adjustments where the hinge goes into the door but you may tweak it adjusting them. If your rocker panels are straight the floor shouldn't be the problem.
Try to find another car w/good fits and measure the door openings diagonally and work to that
with your opening. Shimming body mounts isn't used to align doors.
Sometimes doors get racked with age and have to be twisted back into shape.
There are various ways to do this. Do you have any training in body shaping?
If not you may want a pro to tackle it.
Goodluck,
Ron.
I'm at the limit of adjustment on the hinges and that creates a problem of the gaps not being parallel with the rocker and latch edge of door. I suppose I could open the slots for the hinges on top and bottom and lift the whole door up instead of tilting it. This occurs on both sides with the passenger side worse.
What drove me to think the body needed shimming and maybe fix the door problem is shown in the photos. Before I cut the old floor pans out I could see they were bent to accommodate the mismatch between the floor brace and front angled piece as shown by the straightedge. So, I thought the body had sagged over time and the rusted out floor pans had allowed that. I didn't buy the new floor pan so don't know if they are suppose to have that mismatch and shimming won't remove the mismatch.
Let's back up a bit...we need some more info. it looks like the body was off the frame at some point. When were the old pans cut off?...prior to removing the body? was the body lifted/moved around without bracing, as well as the floors being cut off?Is the front end sheetmetal on? I'm guessing not, which is good. Right now it looks like you have all the front supports undone on both sides, so not supporting any of the front body weight?, so to me they're is nothing of strength supporting the extra weight of the doors.
It's dangerous to give solutions without all the information and without being able to run my hands over everything. One thing was mentioned about elongating the door hinge adjustment holes. Been there...inside the door, the hinge is 'boxed' and has limited adjustment. It is possible a very slight amount of adjustment many be gained but very little. I would install the door and get the best gap at the top and the back (quarter). The front fender will fit to the front edge of the door and the rockers will be installed with proper gap at the bottom. If the roof and rear quarter to door gap is unacceptable, check the body mounts. They should all be on the same plane...use string, level, laser....frame info is in the factory service manual. The A pillar can move independent of the 'B' pillar. If everything checks out and the gap is unacceptable. Confirm the body is the problem with test fitting another door. If still a problem, align the door to the body with the best gap at the windshield/'A' pillar and roof gap, cut the quarter, adjust the gap, weld and metal finish. Caution...NOT for the faint of heart!!!!!!!!!!
Wow, that is scary! Think i'd look for a stripped car and take tons of pics and measurements.
Goodluck,
Ron.
What you have there is normal. The toe board goes in first and is spotted to the brace (cowl body mount). The floor pan goes on top of the toe board and is spotted to it, the body braces, and the inner rocker. EMS front floor pans litterally drop in place after trimming to fit. I recommend bolting the pans down tight on the body mounts before welding. I found on my Ranchero that the pans were tight against the body mount and the toe board. Only the inner rocker needed very slight down pressure to be tight for welding.
The EMS rockers were a perfect fit as well. They need trimming along the top portion and angle downward slightly from the inner to where the door bottom and the upper outer edge of the rocker meet.
I would get the toe boards, tunnel, floors, and rockers all repaired before worring about the door fit. With what you have missing they would not fit correctly after all is replaced/repaired.
FUN STUFF!!!!!!!!
57 Fords aren't very common here in central California 20to 1 chevy-ford. I have a 2 post hoist which I supported the body while blasting and painting the frame. I have the body bolted to the frame while doing the pans. I tried adjusting the doors before disassembling anything and hoped new donuts would help the problem. I used an EMS pan on the left rear floor which fit very well and since I bought some sheet metal working tools, thought I would fab the other pans. After looking at how much I had to remove I may change my mind. I thought if I could move things around by shimming the donuts before welding the floor pans in, the doors would fit better. I replaced the hinge pins and bushing which may have helped a little bit. I tried slotting the door at the hinges but wore my burr out before I got very far.
I feel your pain........ My Ranchero was quite sound compared to some rust-buckets but the doors fitted like square pegs in round holes. No amount of hinge adjustment or shimming sorted it, they were always too low on the rear edge, opening out the hinge bolt holes in the doors helped a bit, but then the front of the door (the upper bit adjacent to the vent window) touched the windshield post! Eventually I gave up and (carefully!!!!) ground away the edge of the door and welded it back up so the door fitted. Drastic I know but NOTHING else seemed to work.
Drastic, but that's the way it's done!
Doors will sag, rack and twist over the years. When I was a kid back in the 60's I worked for an old
guy in a small local body shop that could straighten panels that you would swear were totaled.
Taught me how to use 2X4's and muscle as tools to move metal around. It's amazing what can be done
with some training. Sadly there aren't many of these old timers left.
Probably your doors will need straighting before things will line up.
Goodluck,
Ron.
Many years ago I spoke to an old guy that worked on a Ford body assembly line here in England and he told me that when they were bolting on panels like fenders and doors they would often have to try two or three panels before they found one that fitted properly. He blamed the welding of the panel assemblies rather than the individual pressings.
I don't want to sound crude but what Allen says seems to be normal in 57 Fords. Mine is absolutely the same and even worse. The design of a rigid body, that mounts to soft rubber mounts and a quite flexible chassis totaly lends itself to body twist, bend and distortion, when anything like rocker or floor board rust occurs, or the car gets hit in the front. also with 2 dr cars, especially a HT the opening in the body is so huge, as soon as anything goes bad in the floorboards or rockers the body will get moved around BY INCHES. I know what I am talking, as I have it ALL in my 57.
Concerning Allens question, there are chassis drawings around and on the net, but unfortunately none of them covers the front floorboard body mounts, so we are on ourself.
I believe this is one of the hardest parts of restoring a 57 and it has to be done ALL CORRECT and with lots of patience and efforts. If you don't get it right now, the car will be a banana the rest of its life. My idea of fixing that problem is straightening the chassis square as good as possible, then build the front floors, but not yet the rockers. put the body back on the chassis with fresh mounts and shim and align doors, rear gaps AND the front A posts, which are horrible in aligning because of their twisted complex shape. only after everything is absolutely straight, I will be welding in the outer rockers. Just my idea and I have been thinking about that for 3 years now.
One of my personal restoration "rules" is to get the doors fitting perfectly before replacing any metalwork, in the case of my Ranchero I gave up at the start as the fit was just SO bad. There is a belief that cars of the 50's were built like tanks and while the gauge of the steel used was certainly way thicker than anything used today, the actual number of strengthening panels within the body assembly is a lot less so it only takes a bit of rust and sagging body mount rubbers to let everything twist & move.
Take a modern car (I know, I know.......) and if you stripped it down it would have three rocker panels (inner, outer and a central strengthening membrane) along with channels pressed into other panels to provide much needed strength. Any stressed areas (suspension mountings and the like) have several panels and fillet pieces welded together to give a light yet strong structure (and plenty of rust traps). With the 57 Fords there is just a simple inner & outer rocker and the floor braces terminate under the floor rather than being one continuous run from inner rocker right through to the opposite inner rocker.
It wasn't just Ford, look at the structure of any older car and they really were very simple structures. In 1958, Chevrolet actually used cast iron to replace the rubber body mounts on police cars to stiffen them up!
I agree with Gary, if you can do all the sheet metal work with the car in it's original configuration. That is still on the frame, doors aligned and fenders in place (unless you have bottom of the door hinge panel repairs).
I had inner and outer rocker work from front to rear on the left side and about half way back the door opening on the right side. The doors stayed in place and were opened and closed every step of the way, rusty cut out, check door fit, new spotted in, check door fit, weld new in. Same happened with the toe board and floor pan work on both sides. Doors still fit!
I believe in Allen's case he needs to get the structure right before fitting the doors. The inner rocker ties the body mounts, cowl, toe boards, floor pans, and the floor braces together. The outer rocker I believe provides more "finish appearance" then structure to the body and can be "adjusted" for fit after all else is finished.
Guess i'm lucky having Retracts w/the big X-frame and solid mounts.
Door gaps only open up about 1/8th" when the heavy top is down.
Even so i still weld crossbraces in the door openings and across the body when
doing any metal replacements.
We should try to put together some accurate dimentions for 57's for future reference.
Ron.
Ron do you think that would even be possible give the variances in the cars from factory to factory? Did each site stamp their own parts or were they shipped to each assembly plant? I have not "swapped" parts (fenders/doors/trunk lids) other then hoods between cars that are here and/or have come through here so I can't say how the fit would be. I know there are differences with small trim and fastener items and the location of some of the add on item but do not know about the sheet metal.
Now, having said that, I think that is a great idea. I unfortunately do not have an original here so I can not start. My Retractable had been hit on the drivers side in the past and requires work and the Ranchero has had so much structure (pans/inner rockers/toe boards/floor pans/body mount and brace) replaced not sure it would be a good candidate for reference.
Quote from: Ford Blue blood on 2016-02-29 08:08
Now, having said that, I think that is a great idea. I unfortunately do not have an original here so I can not start. My Retractable had been hit on the drivers side in the past and requires work and the Ranchero has had so much structure (pans/inner rockers/toe boards/floor pans/body mount and brace) replaced not sure it would be a good candidate for reference.
I agree, a great idea but it's always best to take dimensions from an original un-restored car. Mine didn't need as much metal work as yours but the fit of the doors suggested that something had moved out of line at some point.
I'm sure they had jigs for the mounting holes and the major assemblies.
You have to have starting points for everything in mass production, not enough time
to hand fit every piece.
Think I remember Ford having at least one dedicated stamping plant. I will find out for sure.
There are frame diagrams out there, finding body reference points will be harder.
I have swapped a lot of 57 sheetmetal over the years. Once swapped the front clip and doors off a convertable
to a retract because the parts had great black paint and I only had to paint the back half to match.
Small problem convertable vent window assemblies are different than retracts so I had to
change them also.
57's are not the hardest at all. The mounting points are slotted to adjust for tolarance stack and
slight alignment issues. It takes a lot of "feel" to get sheet metal right, the fact is some people have it
most don't. Years of experence can make a huge difference in the product.
Find an old fart to do your body work!
Goodluck,
Ron.
Ford stamping plants were at Buffalo,Chicago,Cleveland and Dearborn of course.
Ron.
I see that I am not alone with the door problem. My rockers are in good shape, so, no need to replace. If I leave the donut bolts in place under the back seat and try bending the rockers by a jacking on the front of the body which will raise the door jam. Or I cut the rocker on the the door latch end and then shim things up to fit. I need to replace the front and rear outer quarter panels on the passenger side only, which may cause problems if I try bending the rocker and then cut out the quarter panel things may move.
I'm having a hard time visualizing what you have to work with.
As a general rule you don't unbolt the frame until each patch panel is welded in, doing only
one panel at a time. Even then it is a good idea to weld in some temporary cross bracing (1x1 square tube works well)
to hold everything in place until your finished.
I'd take some measurements from a known car and weld up some bracing before you go any further.
BTW; What body style are you working on ?
Ron.
Oops, just noticed it's a 2 dr ht. Find a straight car and measure across the door openings at the top and diagonally across for
square. Do the same for the door opening area. Get the measurements right and weld in some cross bracing.
This should get you started.
Goodluck,
Ron.
Thanks for the input guys, I get my sheet metal in a few days and will take your advice and let you know how I do.