Project No-Flight Update
December 2005
Continuing with the body work I decided to take a crack at improving the fit of the passenger side door with the windshield frame. The passenger side windshield frame upright was replaced by some former owner as part of the repairs to the roof damage. The door was previously fit to the front fender profile and the rear fender profile when shimming the hinges. The top of the door fits the roof profile reasonably well, but the front pillar fit to the windshield pillar had a very large gap, and was much to high in profile to fair in. You can somewhat see the mismatch by looking at the front pillar shadow lines in these two photos.
I didn’t want to raise the windshield pillar surface using filler so laid in several layers of alternating fiberglass cloth and mat. What I needed to do was both close up the gap somewhat and “twist” the pillar surface profile so it remained the same height at the windshield opening edge but was about 1/8-3/16 inch higher at the door pillar edge. The first attempt didn't work, the fiberglass pulled right off. I guess it was too cold for the epoxy to cure and bond properly. I re-did the fiberglass using polyester resin, mixed hot to help make up for the cold temp in the garage, and used a couple of lamps to help build some heat during the curing. This time it worked and after a couple coats of epoxy filler to build in some low spots the windshield frame and door now fair in pretty well. I still need to do a little sanding to get the gap uniform over the whole length. You can also see where I have used the epoxy filler to re-build the extension of the fender ridge onto the door.
Here is the driver side door for comparison. It also has had the fender ridge extended to fair into the door better, as well as filling in the hole from where the prior owners had sanded completely through the fender ridge end.
I also finished the repair on the cracked region in the rear pillar.
