Door alignment

I'd previously fitted the door catches as per the manual which requires the doors to be aligned with the body then fitting the door catches to the door with spacers to simulate the thickness of the door card. The recommendation is the thickness of the untrimmed door card plus 5mm. This assumes you are fixing the trimmed door card behind the catch and not cutting the trim around the catch.

To work out where to fit the striker and striker plate I clipped the striker into the door catch, then with the door aligned, marked he striker location and striker plate. Its then a case of cutting some wooden blocks to support the striker plate - then using lots of P38 filler to hold it all in place. Then leave it all to set for a good 24 hours.

Striker, striker plate and tube spacer. Note the striker plate is
proud of the door flange.

I also used some 1/2" steel tube as a spacer between the striker head and the striker plate to improve the rigidity.

So I followed this to the letter and ended up with a great door fit and nice action between the catch and striker.

Striker plate filed down flush.

Next thing was to fit the internal door frame finisher and this is where I found a difference on each side of the car. On the drivers side - no problems. On the passenger side, the striker plate ended up proud of the body lip - which meant I had to file it down to get it anywhere near flush. I used a power file for this  - a lot safer than a grinder.   What this meant was where I could fit the full fibreglass finisher on the drivers side - I had to trim the passenger side so that it finished below the striker plate - else when carpeted it would be sticking out too far.

Passenger side internal finisher - trimmed at top

Next up was to fit the fully trimmed door cards - and this is where the problems started. Basically the thickness of the door card combined with the AK supplied seal meant that the door would not shut correctly and bowed out at the bottom.

The problem was that I'd made the door cards too deep (top to bottom) so the only route forward was to trim the bottom of the cards so that the door seal presses more on the door rather than the card. Now this is easier than it sounds once the card has been trimmed. The leather covering  - which is glued down - has to be carefully peeled back which then allows the bottom edge of the card to be sanded down. Then followed multiple test fits, more sanding , more test fits until I reached a point where the door would fit flush. I used the  power file to ease the operation and beveled the card edge  to try and get some sort of seal between the card and the seal. I then  used leather adhesive to re-fix the leather trim. Lots of hours went into this but its so important to get this right.
In hindsight its better that I had made the cards too big than the other way round!.

Showing the passenger side latch and cut-down inner finisher.

Finished door card

Door seal fitting

The next issue I had concerned the drivers side door latch. The lever is simply an interference fit onto the short shaft that acts as the fulcrum. As the door lock was a bit stiff - and the lever will tend to twist when force is applied -  I managed to dislodge the lever from the fulcrum. I'm thinking this needs to be pretty robust in real life and was toying with returning it to S&J Motors for a replacement.  In the end and to avoid delays I fitted a flat head bolt a couple of thin washers and a nylock to hold it all in place. This meant drilling a clearance hole into the door card and the door skin itself (you don't need these with the standard lock as the rear face is flat.).

In my opinion the result is a lot more robust and I plan to modify the passenger side to match.

Standard latch assembly with pressed-on lever

Modified lever assembly with location bolt.

Off to the body shop

This post is out of sync with the work I've been doing to get the car ready for painting but today's the day its away to the body shop for final preparation and paint.

We've chosen to go with Option1 Sportscars in Bromsgrove. This follows a fair bit of research and weighing up the pro's and cons of the various companies.

In the end we got down to a choice between Option1 and AK's next door neighbours who, granted, do a great job on AK's demo and customer cars.

Andy Menzies picked Option1 for his car and was kind enough to show us round his stunning motor. This was enough to convince me that these guys were a good choice and know what they are doing with composite bodywork. The clincher was they are only 30 minutes away. Frank, the owner, came round one Sunday morning to look over the car and confirm the telephone quote previously given and explained the process they go through to prepare and paint.

So off it goes and I can look to tidy the garage ready for the return!

All undressed ready for the paint shop