Door Adjustments

[Bill Stoneberg]

In the years that I have been working on the Woodie, I have had the body off the frame, the doors off the car and all the floors cut out and new ones welded in. While I was careful to make sure everything was braced, I obviously did not do a good enough job.

Now that I am putting it back together, the doors are racked and dont fit in the openings anymore. This is going to create prpblems as I am putting the wood on.

On the Older Buicks (1950) are there any hinge adjustments ? I have looked but see no way of adjusting the doors side to side or top to bottom.

Is there any documentation on this, I see nothing in my shop manual.

Thanks

[palbuick]

Hi Bill

With these old cars it seems every time you turn around there is anothe problem. Mabye this is why most of us are a little dizzy.

One possibility is the body mounts, wrong thickness, not torqued down enough or too much. Think about it as you tighten down one body mount the body shifts to adifferent angle, the next bolt you tighten down changes the angle again. this might sound horrible but loosen all the body mounts to the frame , hang the doors and then go back and tighten down the body to the frame, then you may have

to adjust the doors again. Remember the body mounts are rubber, and compressing

one harder than another will make something off.

I learned about some of this from my 40 shop manual.

Jim Schilf

palbuick@aol.com

[Guest 53and61]

I have a '50 shop manual that describes up/down and in/out adjustments by hinge screws that go through slotted holes in the door hinge pillars and body hinge pillars. They claim forward/rearward adjustment shouldn't be necessary unless the hinges or doors have been distorted. However, they go on to describe rearward adjustment by shimming under the hinge straps.

[NTX5467]

Great observations, palbuick!

Door adjustments can be tedious and time consuming, to say the least. You'll typically have fore/aft adjustment at the body side of the hinge and then in/out adjustment on the door shell portion of the hinge. Use the rear striker as the final adjustment for "in/out". There would probably be a very limited amount of up/down adjustment compared to the other adjustments.

One other thing to consider is that unless you've got the car on a drive-on alignment rack, you can run into trouble as not all "level" floors really are level. This might affect the final adjustment as the body/frame are working as one entity and can flex together.

Enjoy!

NTX5467

[old-tank]

Hey Bill

I thought you had a restorer doing all that. Anyhow check out this link:

http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4630