I was quite chuffed with the two door skins that I made, I thought they came out well and would look good in the car. Things didn't go quite so well when I went to fit the doors. The problem I had caused myself is that somehow I had managed to mount the running boards 2mm too high, which may not sound like a lot but when I glued the rubber on the offside one I realised the door would not open properly as the bottom of the door rubbed on the ribbed rubber. It wasn't too bad but certainly wasn't right, it was easy to fix though, literally half a millimeter ground off the bottom of the door had that fixed, sadly it was a very different story the other side.
I still haven't really got my head around it, it had the same height problem as the other side and when I trimmed it down I went through the weld on the bottom seam so that had to be redone. What was really weird is that it simply would not shut, the b pillar seemed to have moved a couple of milimeters, enough to stop it shutting. In the end I had to resort to using a bottle jack to widen the aperture. that worked but it caused some filler to crack, I had filled the hole where the flip out indicator used to be and filled over it, that didn't like being flexed by the jack, so that was something else that had to be redone. The door still hit right up near the top, not much, it would close but it wasn't right, the only way I could fix that was to gently massage it with my biggest hammer. That did the trick. It is now closing nicely, I do need to get a new striker plate though, the car came to me with 3 of the 4 fitted, I could make one but it would take ages, it seems daft when they are only a few quid to buy and are not hard to find.
The next disaster came when I slammed the door shut and the bakerlite window surround snapped in half - that's a real pain, they are hard to fix and cost about 40 quid each to replace. Not happy about that one, I will have to try and fix it but don't fancy my chances much. Maybe super glue and some pinning will do the trick with a bit of filler to hide any chips. It's not the end of the world, replacements are fairly easy to come by but on top of everything else my misery was complete.
I have wasted pretty much a whole day fixing stuff through one small mistake, it's really annoying, I should have put the steps on lower only 3mm would have saved all this aggro, I am pretty annoyed with myself, schoolboy error. Today I hope to redeem myself a bit by making the inner door skins for the two rear doors, which are not doors any more as they won't open. Hopefully they will fit fine without any messing about, although it wouldn't surprise me if they need to be trimmed at the bottom too. Bugger.
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