Behind Door Number One

I have one door done! I am excite, as the kids say, mainly because it’s another thing actually done. Note if you’re really going to do door skins, go read Ron Garner’s Mad About Morgans posts on the subject–he has genuine wisdom to pass along, unlike yrs trly. I’d guess the metal part of the door took about 20 hours of my time; it will be interesting to see if the other door goes quicker. I doubt it.

Here are the door liners…undoubtedly the factory made their joins in different places, but all they do is provide a way to secure the skin and all is hidden. I have notes about trimming scrawled to myself here…but I did make the liners a bit big at the front. They look ok here but clearance proved to be really tight once the skin was on.

The liner has been trimmed to final size and cleaned. Note that I primed the backs of these before nailing them to the door frame.

Here the skin has been outlined onto a piece of 20 gauge steel. The skin is cut a quarter-inch large all the way round except the armrest, where 3/8ths is left.

Here’s the skin, cut to size. I used a nibbler for the long cuts but had to clean them all up with hand shears anyway.

Here is the inner side of the skin and the door frame, ready for primer.

Freshly primed…

…and painted with Rustoleum. Whatever protection can be provided in there will be welcome!

I don’t have any photos of the folding process. Let’s just say it’s tedious, and I want some very specific hammers which I don’t have! The results looked good, or at least “good enough” without too much tool rash.

I have yet to fold over the armrest or solder the corners in this shot…

…as you can see here.

I really need to get better with the folding process over wood. I’m not entirely satisfied with how smooth the curve is here, but maybe it can be fixed in post-production.

The door has been offered up for an initial fit here, and you can see it’s not perfect up front. The shape is right, so that’s something…

I ended up “massaging” the steel to fit, and shimmed the lower hinge. Here I’ve made some notes.

I decided to fit the twist fittings and lift-the dots for the top and tonneau so I could get a feel for how the cockpit is doing. I, of course, needed to move the already-installed rear twist fittings down a bit, I had modeled them on the old panel. Oops.

The cover seems to be ok, and there’s our friend the door, completely with exterior handle.

There’s a lot of smudging on the door here as I was trying to determine where to put the fasteners for the side-curtains. Also, the holes for the windshield brackets on both sides will not actually work with the scuttle having changed shape a bit. So I’m going to construct a mock-windshield, dangle the brackets from them, and make more holes. I can then definitively locate the side curtain mounts. I hope.