The Peerless & Warwick Discussion Forum

Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Post Info TOPIC: Opinions sought, please


Status: Offline
Posts: 699
Date:
Opinions sought, please


So, whilst waiting for my sparky to get back to me, I've been pressing on with a fair number of small jobs on #86.

Having exhausted these, I've decided to bite the bullet and get on with the doors.

I knew the nearside door was going to be problematic for two reasons. Firstly, I knew there was a twist in it possibly because it was badly misaligned on the original body and had taken a chunk out of the wing and, secondly, I was aware of a fit issue with original doors and new bodies. I think it was Gary that identified the problem area as being at the top leading edge in the vicinity of the 'A' pillar. 

Anyway, having tried god knows how many ways to get a reasonable fit, I came to the conclusion that it just wasn't going to happen and decided to resort to major surgery.

Off came the door skin.

A little bit of fettling and this was the result.

Door skin off.jpg

This is the door frame bolted up tight to the hinge and with the striker plate holding the frame in place at the other end. Although I've obviously been holding my phone at an angle, the spirit level shows the top. metal frame sitting level.

So the next stage was to offer up the skin and see if I could get the gaps looking good. 

Here's the result.

Door skin on.jpg

Now, as you can see, the rear edge is looking pretty good. The bottom is fine too. It just needs a couple of mm taken off the frame to sit in a bit and with a gap similar to the rear edge.

The front edge? Not so good.

IIRC, when Gary highlighted this problem area, he built up the body to match the door skin (correct me if I'm wrong, anyone).

However, I'm not sure I might be better adding material to the top leading edge of the skin and getting that to match the body rather than the other way round.

And this is where I'd like some opinions, please.

I should point out that this is something I've done in the past when I had to replace a badly damaged door on my Scimitar Se5a. I couldn't get the new (from a scrapper) door to fit so de-skinned it, adjusted the frame and bonded on the skin again. However, in that instance, the skin actually fitted the aperture unlike here.

 

I should have added that I realise there is no weight in the door atm and I'm going to have to compensate for that in due course.

However, the question is just about making the body fit the door skin or the door skin fit the body.



-- Edited by mikerf on Thursday 11th of March 2021 03:16:56 PM

Attachments
__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 22
Date:


first, I would make both sides equal, regardless of door-skin or body
if the difference is neglect-able I would modify the door-skin as this needs to glassed anyway and the body already seems in primer ..?

In general, I have the feeling you have a tight fit all around, guess you know that but depending on number of paint layers (and filler ?) the gaps might be reduced by maybe half a mm ?

just my 5 pence

Peter

__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 855
Date:

great progress Mike, we really should meet up one day...how many years have we "talked GRP" now!

+1 with Peter on that, I would extend the door skin as most of your work is on this area anyways. Gaffa tape on the outside, glass it up on the inside JD!

I think I've added it on the forum sometime ago that I cut my door skins off too. I "glued" them back in the right position and filed most of/didn't worry about the door shut/gap.

Then re-cut the gaps out with disc cutter/Dremel etc and finished off with monkey sticks!

Definition of a Monkey stick:

Have you seen monkeys when they extracting Ants from an Ant mound? they use a stick/tool to get them out.

I use off-cuts of Acrylic/Foamex/MDF/birch ply etc which gives me a range of different thickness blanks, I find 3mm-5mm-10mm the most useful.

I have found if I cut these blanks on the circular saw to roughly 52mm X 300mm and then wrap in double sided tape I can then wrap wet & dry abrasive paper around three sides of the blank. At these sizes you get two "monkey sticks" from one sheet of abrasive paper.

I know this sounds weird/fanatical/bizarre but when you sand stuff as much as I do (or did anyway thanks to Covid!) you may as well be frugal!

with a 3-4mm blank, wrapped in double sided tape and abrasive you get may be a 5mm monkey stick. obviously different grade of paper/double sided tape give you different thicknesses etc but you get the idea. 50mm wide double sided tape is easily bought but again I know guys in the sign trade and go see them for "end of roll" double sided tape from there automated machines that comes 1000mm to 1500mm wide, then I cut it down to 300mm wide rolls on my band saw....small savings buys more beer wink

with a 5mm monkey stick you can sand a good door shut all round biggrin

then after 70,000 + miles you stand back and look at one day and realise they sag and you wonder why you bothered confuse 

 



__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 699
Date:

Way too many, Nigel.

 

My first thoughts were to extend the skin too. The line of the body looks, to my eyes, to be better than the line of the door skin. Mind you, with my eyes, that's not always the best option.

 

I agree that adding material to the skin is probably the easier option too. 

 

It was my intention to add small angle brackets to the outer edge of the door frame and make them adjustable with a self tapper until I get the skin sitting in the gap properly. Once that's done, GRP tape (see sitting on top of the bonnet) the skin in place in between the brackets, remove brackets and finish off the taping.

 

I've used your 'Monkey Sticks' before to create equal shadow gaps when paneling up exhibition stands. Nothing sticks out like a sore thumb more than a gap between two panels that tapers to the top or bottom of the stand. Never called them Monkey Sticks, though. That sounds like a product of your fertile imagination. biggrinbiggrin



__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 368
Date:

It think the best bet is to carefully build up the body

BUT....

Check that there is no interference when the door opens.

The same problem persists into Warwicks, and there is no ideal solution, you either have a larger than ideal panel gap at the front, or the door rubs as you open it.  The "Root cause" seems to be a different curve in the wing between left and right.

Hand made cars, don't you love them!

F



__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 699
Date:

Thank you Peter & Frank.

As usual with Peerless, if there are two different ways of doing something, you'll get two different answers but I guess that's part of the joy of owning such a unique car. There's just not enough around to get a consensus of opinion.

Still be interested in hearing other opinions though before I set about it next week.

__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 855
Date:

I think I just screwed 2x1 across the aperture and screwed the door skin to it as well. then glassed the frame to the skin alround and removed the 2x1.

Due to the skins being 60 year old GRP are you going to re-skin the skins first? (as this will add thickness?) 

 

Grandmother/egg/suck:

Trick is to use a long bed sander as these cars a very flat in the horizontal plain. Long bed air sanders use a prodigious amount of air/CFM especially the cheap models on the market.

Hand held/home made is cheaper still and saves you a fortune in Gym membership!

 



__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 699
Date:

I have a cunning plan! (Apologies to non-Baldrick fans)

I've noticed that the door bows out to the bottom, rear corner.

To attempt to correct this, I'm going to try and fabricate a cross brace that will hold the back end of the door square to the front where it's held firmly by the hinge plate.

Not sure if this will work but getting the door frame square can only help when I fit the skin. I'll be using the original skin (because I'm a masochist) and I feel if I mould a new one, I'd have been better off buying new doors at the same time as I bought the body.

And, of course, I'm Scottish! (Read mean, tight, grippit, penny pinching, miserly etc, etc.)



__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 368
Date:

A Cunning Stunt Baldric!

You mean, like this??

IMG_20210312_201859.jpg

The leading edge of the door frame is missing because the reinforcing plate had rusted away and burst the laminations.

It will get the twist out of the door, you will need to add material to the body to match the door curve/gap.

And the leading edge of the door skin will still catch on the body as the door opens.

Good luck!

 

F



Attachments
__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 320
Date:

Hi Mike,

I see that you have bolted the doorframe to the original hinges.

Did you try to open the doorframe like a normal door and see that the back of the frame does not interfere with the B post?

There is not an awful lot of room there.

Also, the back to front position of the doorframe more or less determines the positioning of the window frame towards the B post. 

Might be an idea to check with the window frame.

I believe that the cabin side of the doorframe should be vertical and parallel to the chassis.

The idea of the angle brackets to align and fix the skin to the frame is good.

As i am still working on the rhs door of my Ph2, i can honoustly say that it's harder than i thought to get everything lined up perfectly.

And Ph2 doors and hinges are quite a bit better compared to Ph1.

So please take your time measuring and triple checking before you glass the skin to the frame.    



__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 320
Date:

Oh almost forgot.

You can also use string to check if the body and door align properly

This helped me a lot. 

20210117_151914.jpg

 



-- Edited by Erik V on Saturday 13th of March 2021 07:49:31 AM



-- Edited by Erik V on Saturday 13th of March 2021 09:21:04 AM

Attachments
__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 699
Date:

Hi Frank. No. Not like that. Are these Warwick doors? The P1 doors are just a glorified U shape and without the top metal strip tend to just flop about. What I need to do is brace the rear end of the frame so it sits square and firmly in line with the front before I bond the skin back on. At present, even with top metal in place there is too much flex in the frame to make fitting the skin properly a bit hit or miss. Needless to say, the bracing would be removed once the skin is on to allow for all the hardware.

Erik. Hi again. Yes, I've checked the window frame. There's enough wiggle room to make it work. The fit at the B post is tight but it's the striker plate that the door is tight on, not the B post.

Thank you all for your input.

__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 855
Date:

Ii got so far into this I forgot to do a trial fit of the chrome frame. When I did attempt to fit it it was to tight. It look ok on the car but the original glass wouldn't go in! went to the MOT with acrylic fitted.....and still is!disbelief



__________________


Status: Offline
Posts: 699
Date:

Yes, had a trial with various parts of the door internals at the weekend. Talk about herding cats? Each time you do one thing, it moves something else. You need about 20 hands to hold everything in place.

__________________
Page 1 of 1  sorted by
 
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.

Tweet this page Post to Digg Post to Del.icio.us


Create your own FREE Forum
Report Abuse
Powered by ActiveBoard