Hey Mitch, On some of these, even if the hinges for the hood , deck & doors are in great shape, and the latches too, you may still be lookin at panel work! Sometimes slits in the quarter at the B post as well as the front fenders are necessary for a dead nuts fit. Jack work, come-a long & fender straps, plus slitting, welding , and leading up the repairs are also necessary. I jus' love seein' cars with 10-20K paintjobs with panel gaps big enough to through a cat threw! Good luck! S****y Devils C.C. " All great truths begin as blasphemies''
i agree with Pimpin..... you can get it close but you might to cut some of the edge and weld it back up. i had to do it to this 40 Merc. i cut 3/16" off the edge of the hood and shaved off some of the door.
This is what my pal =BONES= has been doing to my car (51 Chevy coupe). His pursuit of perfection has been time consuming but he has really got the gaps good. He has a ton of work into my car and I can't even tell you how much I appreciate it. Like others said. It took A LOT of work. He actually cut, moved, added, and welded around almost the entire trunk area to get the decklid gaps right. Had to add some metal to the leading edge of the doors to get the gaps good to the fenders, and just had to do a minor surgery to the hood (little slice n move) to get that gap. The cars just don't line up that well, throw in some customizing and driving the car pretty hard for a few years and you have added to the misalignment. One thing that makes a HUGE difference is all new rubber. we have also had to do some shimming, replaced the hood brackets, and did some "manual tweaking". Once all the panels fit well (panels are in primer) we are going to pin everything so that it goes back together real nice after the shiny stuff gets applied. By the way, I am no help because he says he NEVER wants to do one of these Chevys again. FONZI FONZI
there's a couple hours work between these two pictures, and the door fit is ok, but not good enough.... It's not rocket surgury, but it does take a lot of patience.
thanks for the replies guys... i'm not worried so much about the gaps.... i'm more worried about the doors and hood opening and closing correctly. the doors a a little sticky and the right front corner of the hood is banging on the grille.
start with the door hinges, make sure they're tight and solidly mounted to the body. Then make sure the latches and strikers are in good shape, fix/replace if they aren't. Check the body mounts, replace if necessary. Then you can align the doors, which may require shimming the body. Once you get the doors fitting and working right, you can align the fenders/grille and then the hood. You may need to bend stuff to get it straight again. It's work, and it requires some patience, but it's not magic.
Besides slicing and dicing, there might be a need to push and slide some of these openings; to make room for the parts. Most of these cars/trucks had bad gaps from the factory. So in some cases, you need to re manufacture the whole car; so cost would depend on how bad it is. I've had new parts, from the dealer, that wouldn't bolt on; we called them ***embly line rejects, but were good enough to be sold as a new part. Let some body guy figure out how to make it work.
our cars have a lot of hood-fender bumpers, make sure to replace them all. the hinge pins wear out and you get side to side movement, I have removed the hinges, heated the pins and smacked them with a hammer to tighten them up again.
Hey, The door may need another latch (rebuilt or NOS), or just the striker post adjusted and lubed. The hood adjustment to grille contact problem could jus' need the hood bumper that's close to the core support , or closest to the grille ,rotated counterclockwise, untin the hood panel is raised enough to stop contact. A simple adjustment, providing there's a rubber bumper left on the stud of the bumper. S****y Devils C.C. " A legend in his own ba*****t"
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