Door Adjustment - need to tweek

[PatO]

Hello

My passenger door needs just a little bit of adjustment. The gaps between the quarter panels are really good.  What I have is the door is rotated slightly along the axis of the car.  At the top of the door, the door panel sticks out just a bit from the quarter panel. Out being further from the center line of the car. The lower part of the door is rotated in just a bit also.  I've used a straight edge all around to verify. Maybe  1/8 inch at the most at the rear of the door.  It is pretty obvious when walking up to the car in the daylight.

I've played with the striker pin more than a few times but no improvement.

I see how the upper hinge on the door has 2 bolts and can be adjusted.  The lower hinge that attaches to the door has 4 bolts. That has me stumped.

On the lower hinge, is there a particular way to loosen the bolts or "a" bolt to get it to act as a pivot before I loosen the upper hinge bolts and twist the door slightly?   

Thank you.

[PatO]

I've attached a picture of the lower door hinge where it attaches to the door.

the two leftmost bolts are closest to the outside of the door and the other two, towards the right of the picture are to the inside of the car.

I'm hoping not to mess this up and do something backwards from what it should be.

[anlauto]

All four of those bolts simply bolt to a plate inside the down that is free floating...to a certain degree, the four holes in the door are larger squares allowing you to adjust in and out quite easy. How is the door align with the fender and rocker ?

[JS29]

If you want to adjust the bottom, you loosen all except one top bolt. that bolt becomes a pivot point. then if you need to set the top, loosen all except the bolt on the vary bottom and swivel into position.,  sometimes it is necessary to crack the pivot bolt slightly. There is a fair amount of adjustment and sometimes you have to go back and fourth a few times. patents is needed sometime.  Are these doors loaded or empty.

[PatO]

The door is fully assembled and I've driven the car for a couple of years now. It seems like things have settled a bit.

I just went out and looked at things a bit more carefully. 

When closing the door, it rides up on the striker at least 1/8" or maybe  3/16" so as to have the top of the door even with the top of the rear quarter. This also enables a better window seal at the top of the side glass. (The glass cannot be adjusted further)  That causes the rear gap (door/rear quarter) to narrow towards the bottom.  The door bottom to rocker gap is about 3/16" +/- at the front and 3/8" at the rear with the door fully closed.

The gap at the door/front fender is wider at that the bottom than the top but it is plenty wide. The door is definitely not square in the opening any longer.

At the front of the door at the top it appears to be about 1/8", at the most, below the top of the front fender.  The door crease (body line) is definitely 1/8" lower than the fender crease in the front quarter.

Sitting there and looking at it for a while - it appears that the front edge of the door could move forward about 1/8" and the front of the door would need to come up a bit also. This would seem to improve the parallelism of the door gaps. 

As I've read elsewhere, I looks like I need to get the door adjusted a little better without the striker installed?  Also, facing the front of the car and looking at the top of the door, it certainly appears that the door needs a very slight counter clock wise rotation - hence my original observation.

What complicates this is the fact that at some point in years past the car was "Halved". 2 different cars welded together in the middle. During the restoration we found the seam in the floor pan and rockers where the front and rear halves where joined.  We opened up the rockers and installed sleeves to create a double walled rocker for about 8" on either side of the seam. We also installed subframe connectors to strengthen this area more.

With this amount of reworking I know not to expect perfection but I think it can be improved a bit.

[JS29]

The same rule applies to adjusting the hinge at the hinge pillar or A pillar.   

[anlauto]

I will also chime in before @MoparLeo does to tell you that it pointless to try and adjust your doors if the hinges are worn out 

[PatO]

I've been looking at this door again this morning.  I found I could lift the open door at the rear slightly before I saw the car move.  Maybe a quarter inch?

I don't think the hinges have ever been rebuilt.   

I've become convinced that my window sealing / wind noise issues is more door alignment issues than side glass adjustments.   

[MoparLeo]

Lifting the door from the handle side shows that that the lower pivot pin is worn. Time to get the hinges rebuilt
We do complete door hinge restorations, not a "pin job rebuild".
Click on attachments for more info.