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MG MGA - fender/door/plinthes /bucket sequence

Hey 1960 coupe needs fenders mounted and doors . Just was wondering if any thoughts on sequence . Virgin door / fender gaps and piping is all laying on the table . New headlight buckets and gaskets . Blue tape , 6 hands , anti seize , new hardware , taps ..ect .. Sure would appreciate any thoughts on this right or wrong they are going on . You can see my photos here Del http://fastpitstops.com/galleries.htm Thanks karl
Karl LaFollette

Same as a roadster, you build the car around the doors. Looks like you already have the door posts and sills finished, so I hope you don't need to back up now. Do the doors first. Install the shut face plates temporarily while you get hinges and latches working and the doors properly aligned, paying attention to the bottom gap. Then install the fenders with required alignment to the doors.

You may have to remove the striker plate and shut face plate to get the rear fender mounted. If you are a little crafty you might mount the rear fenders temporarily while installing shut face plates. Then you might be able to later slip front edge of the rear fender under the flange on the shut face plate without removing the plate or striker. Plinths and lamps are last, after the fenders and piping are finished.
Barney Gaylord

The chances are that you won't get a perfect gap all the way round and perfect flush alignment with the sills, and fenders. I've looked at hundreds of cars and only seen a few that come close. The coupes are even harder, I'm doing one myself at the moment. Unless you marked the hinge locations prior to removal or didn't remove the hinges you'll spend a lot of time messing with them. Mount the doors first and then the rear fenders and then the front. Most of the adjustment will be with the doors and hinges to get the best fit all round. You can shim the hinges at the posts and have considerable movement in and out. Be careful to keep the hinges in a vertical alignment otherwise the doors will be difficult to close because of the strain on the hinges. You can also shim th fenders at the sill and move them a little in the bolt holes.

Good Luck and let us know what you learn. As I said I'm doing mine soon.

Andy
Andy Preston

I am currently working on the passenger side and the best gap I could get was approx 3/16" at the back and bottom of the door but the front edge of the door went from 1/8 to over 1/4 even with dropping the front of the front fender down as far as possible. This then made the bottom of the front fender hang down too low when viewing the car from the front. Is is acceptable procedure to weld a bead onto the back edge of the front fender and then grind it to get a perfect gap or is there some other method?

When replacing the sills I did not touch the hinge pillar so I do not know why the alignment is so bad.

Andres
Andres Losin

andres,yes.correct pocedure to weld bead on fenders to correct gap.as usual barney is correct in building car around doors.chris
cec chris

That poorly built, hard to navigate site crashed my browser...
Del Rawlins

It took about 5 hours or so to get this far . One side allmost buttoned up and a door on th e passenger side . WE used a 1/8 shim on the bottom of the drivers door /hinge made of abs plastic that gave us just the right action we where looking for . Some helpful hints would be patience and let somebody else do it . MY buddy Gerry and Ray made it look easy . I well post more photos and a complete run down of any mods we had to make . Del alot of porn will eat up memory , Try not to run so much on those Alaskan internet wires and you should be able to hook up . http://s48.photobucket.com/albums/f246/racetearoffs/?mediafilter=images
Karl LaFollette

Karl
Not much use now but the best way to get alignment back is to drill a small hole through hinge and body before removing the doors for restoration (as long as they fit well at that time. On re-assembly it is just a case of fitting a bit of stiff wire through the hole and tightening the bolts/screws etc.
This is the method used by many body shops if they need to remove a door.
The method I used on my roadster was just to mount everything loosely tight (where a slight tap can move everything but not by much) and fit some plastic spacers between door and wing edges then push together and adjust until door base to sill looked right. Tightened everything back up and hey presto.

Neil
Neil Purves

Sorry you had problems Del check out my pictures http://s48.photobucket.com/albums/f246/racetearoffs/?mediafilter=images . We used 3m double side tape to make the welting stand tall and it looked alot better /smooth . We put 3M double sided tape in the gaps between the bolts to sure up the welting .
Karl LaFollette

This thread was discussed between 12/12/2007 and 17/12/2007

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