Been stripping the doors since I got back from my European holidays. This is probably the worse door as far as rust goes. Bottom step is completely gone and will have to be replaced. Will have to be a 'Z' shaped piece that needs to be straight one way but curved the other which makes it harder to reproduce.
The other side is no better and every door will need some of the skin replaced.
Spent some time working out which door had the better front section verses which had the better rear section.
Now I still have 4 doors but two have grown by 7" and two have shrunk by that much! Maybe the little ones might be good for someone doing a dual cab version.
. They are just sitting there and have not been tacked.
This gives you an idea of how I am making the doors 7" longer to suit the cab extension. If you compare the two back pieces you can see the extra length in front of where the door handle sits
I will mix and match the door tops to get the best pieces to make the longer window frames. Not only has to be 7" longer, but extra length needed due to the 2" chop. I will only need one weld seam doing it this way just like the doors.
Just balanced the pieces there to get a shot of what it will look like. I have cut it over size by one door gap so I can trim away the extra to get a perfect fit up for tig welding. Least there will only be the one seam.
Bit hard to see but the centre rib has been crushed at one point and will need to be fixed. Also shows the door has been sucked in as well as should be parallel with the rest of the skin.
Should not be a gap under the front of the ruler but is due to the flattened rib in the middle.
Clamped some solid round bar into the vise that matched the profile. Hit down each side to raise the rib back up.
Looking a lot better now. Also pressed down on each end of the door by hand to get the curve back in again. Just moved along a little at a time so the end of the rod would not cause a crease.
Checking to make sure the rib curve is the same with the ones each side of it.
Here is the good rib I was comparing against.
Checking to see if all the same height.
The whole way along was checked.
