hinge & brackets

You may have read in earlier posts how I feared the bodyshell had distorted (due to the door fit problems I had) then subsequently have read how things had miraculously sorted themselves with some adjustments of the doors on their hinges.........

Well, every time I open or close the doors (which is quite often as I'm still working on the sills) I inspect the 'fit' not fully understanding the whole situation. I have found that the front door hinges on both sides have no perceptible play in them which is strange as they are heavy doors. They must be good hinges! The top hinge on the passenger side rear door does however have some play in it. If there is no play in the hinges it makes me think the body must have moved or the fault lies in detaching the doors and not putting them back on correctly.

As mentioned before I have not touched the front door hinges where they bolt to the A pillar on the premise that these were adjusted at the factory and have not been disturbed since so best leave them alone and put the bad fit down to the fact that the doors were removed earlier by me.

I was looking at them the other night and suddenly noticed they looked quite at odds with each other. See if you can spot the difference. (you'll need to rotate the images 90 degrees clockwise in your mind's eye to see them in the correct upright position)

RHS front door top hinge

LHS front door top hinge

Did you see it? The LHS hinge is actually overhanging the body panel it is bolted to whereas the RHS hinge is significantly further forward. There must be about 5mm difference! Guess which door is hanging down at its trailing edge? Yes the LHS one. If that hinge was moved forward a few mm the top of the door would move up. Its seems too simple and I still can't understand why I didn't notice a problem before the doors came off but I guess I wasn't looking for it then. I'm also wondering why there would be such a variance on the production line.

Anyway, once I've pondered it a bit longer I dare say I'll move it and see what happens : )