Rewooding a door

[groselle]

I'm in the process of replacing the wood in the front doors of my 1936 Special. I have all of the old wood out and a new set from David Entler. However, I'm curious how to handle the top of the door. There are two bolts that attach the top of the door to the wood. The only problem is that the heads of these bolt are underneath an overlapping piece of the door. I've attached a few pictures. Anyone have ideas as to how to get the old blts out and reinstalled? I could bend the top of the door all the way flat but that seems excessive. Any ideas would be appeciated. Thanks in advance.

[Pete Phillips]

Sorry, but I can't decipher much from your photos, but I believe bending the sheet metal back to expose the wood & the hardware is the only way to do it. I've done wood replacement on a 1924 Buick and a 1928 Franklin, and in both cases the way to do it was to untack the sheet metal from the wood frame and bend it back out of the way.

Pete Phillips, BCA #7338

Sherman, TX

[keiser31]

You should call David Hochhalter. He re-woods cars for people. He will probably be able to answer all of your questions about it. (509)447-3212

[JoelsBuicks]

Greg, here is what I did. After removing the T-nuts from the bolts, I pulled/bent the metal back just far enough to remove the bolts. After inserting the new wood, I once again pulled back the metal and reinserted bolts. Then, I ground away the three little barbs on the T-nut and made a wrench to tighten the T-nuts (a spanner wrench of sorts). I had to hold the screw slot while I tightened, but I just used a screwdriver shoved into the slot sideways. I was not able to do this without permanent distortion of the metal, fixable with a little filler.

Someday when I have to do this again for my series 40, I will grind away part of the back side of the countersink in the metal so that a new bolt will go in without having to permanently distort the metal - essentially make the hole bigger but leave enough metal for the bolt head to still catch.

Joel