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Door Gaps

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Lotuswins

Lotuswins

Jedi Trainee
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Hello,

New member here, Jerry Rude in Roseburg OR, with a BJ8 under construction. I'm fitting the panels for the 2nd time, apparently once wasn't quite enough, and have a question about door gaps. What is the acceptable range for them on the Healey??

I measured my wife's S-type, and they are between .140 and .170. The Dodge Dakota is between .170 and .240. Measuring the Europa is out of the question, I'm just lucky the door fits into the hole :^)

Presently the BJ8's left door, the problem child, has .400 at the bottom, and .060 at the top, on the front edge. The rocker panel edge is about .060, and the rear is tight against the fender, but at least it is constant. I figure I'll have to modify the front fender, and bend the hinges to bring the door forward, so if I do that, I figure I'll have a little less than .200 inches if I remove some material from the front fender and move the door forward. Is this an acceptable gap??

The other side is pretty good, at about .125 or so front and rear, and bottom at about .060 once I move the door up and secure the rear fender.

Thanks for any thoughts on this subject......I'm getting close to final body work, and I'm getting excited about final painting......I'm 8 years into a 3 year restoration.....

Jerry Rude
1967 BJ8
1973 Lotus Europa
 
Hello Jerry and welcome aboard.
All I know about door gaps on Healeys is that they vary greatly from car to car, even side to side on the same car and certainly around any one door. I'm not sure there is an accepatable standard to go by but if there is, someone from this forum will know.
Best of luck with the project.
Cheers
 
Kudos to the folks who do door and panel alignment on big Healeys for a living. I'd love to go back a bit in time and watch the guys in the factory do this. At least they had un-tweaked frames to start with. I spent many hours adjusting the door gaps on my BN-2 when I was finishing up the rebuild. I was able to get them to an acceptable state by milling a bit off the hinges an a couple of spots (this will "tilt" the door )and shimming others. My frame is and was in pretty good shape, but I can't say that over the years the door openings have remained what they were. It woldn't take much to make this job a nightmare. There should be no rules for this sort of stuff as long as it doesn't show. The biggest head ache is that you can't easily move the door to where you want it with the hinge screws "snug" but not tight and expect it to say when you open the door to tighten them. I found snug screws and rubber deadblow mallets (applied to the hinges only)as the best way to adjust them. I think the key is to get them as even as possible while not having any interference problems when you open or close them. Even door gaps are what I was after and I actually had them for a few months. After a few potholes that I wish I'd missed they are not quite so even. I haven't mustered the energy to go through it again.
 
Hello Jerry,

We'd all love to have perfectly sized uniformed gaps on the leading, bottom and rear edge of our doors. That's the perfect world we do not live in.

I've been told that when the cars were put together at the plant, the guy would keep grabing panels to find one that would fit that car. So even back then, they had fit problems.

What we strive for with our Healeys and most likely all the other British cars of that period, is to have the doors flush with the wings, and that the gaps are consistent as much possible. Don't worry about what the gap size should be, just try to be somewhat consistant around the door, or what ever works.

Adjustments will be made by moving and possible shimming the front hinges, plus adjusting the striker and possible shim under that.

I do wish you good luck with this project. I, like so many others have spent countless hours trying to get a good fit. The fit being how it looks and the ease of closing it with an easy click shut.

Cheers,
Roger
 
I love it. Beat it to fit, paint it to match. Thanks for that. There are some moves I may employ. The only difference is those guys never had to see that car again.
 
roscoe said:
I love it. Beat it to fit, paint it to match. Thanks for that. There are some moves I may employ. The only difference is those guys never had to see that car again.
Click to expand...

Best not try the car wash test in a Healey. YOu might need a raincoat. :jester:
 
Jim, Thanks for the kind words of encouragement. I found on a club website that they should be in the 3 to 4 mm range... which I've been able to manage with a bunch of welding and a little of filler.... jerry
 
Thanks so much all, I found a range from https://www.ahc-midlands.org.uk/index.php?page=big-healeys which quotes 3 to 4 mm as the appropriate size for door gaps. I was able to get the door gaps to within the maximum, just barely. Not easy though, as I had to cut and reweld the front fender edge almost the entire vertical length. But its done now, and I'm okay with the results, though I would have liked to use less filler. Now on to the boot lid, which has the bottom brace in need of the lower lip's replacement.....

thanks again, great forum! jerry
 
When I was putting the doors back on my car, I noticed that someone had apparently bent open the lower door hinge on the drivers side to force the hinge to spread open about 1/2 an inch. I tried installing a new hinge but then the
door would not come close to clearing the door opening. Rather than refit all of the panels and the piece of metal that the hinges fasten to, I went with the plan of the guy in the factory that bent the hinge open by reinstalling the original "modified " hinge. Everything went back together and lined up fairly well.
These car body parts were not originally made to a consistent size. The jigs they used to weld the chassis together must not have been very good either. I think they same guys that built your Lotus also built the Healeys. Their cousins later worked at the East German car / tractor factory as seen in the video
: > )

Ed
 
Ed_K said:
... I think they same guys that built your Lotus also built the Healeys. Their cousins later worked at the East German car / tractor factory as seen in the video
: > )

Ed
Click to expand...


Lest we think the Europeans have a monopoly on this practice: my father used to be a Ford factory rep based at the old Milpitas, CA assembly plant. He said they picked the biggest, strongest guy on the assembly line--who happened to be African-American--gave him a 2x4 and set him to work 'adjusting' the doors on Mustangs. Whatever it took to get the doors to line up reasonably well.
 
Here was serious door gap problems. Believe it or not those rear fenders were BRAND NEW. Ordered from all the way across the pond. Non-returnable. hope my pics came out.
 
Since then I've learned how to wheel and made my own pieces for the next time. Actually I made these after the body was finished as practice. And now I will keep them as patch panels if, god forbid, I should ever need them. They fit the wooden buck prefectly and I made the buck from the fender that I took off the car and it fit prefectly. the reason I changed the rear fenders even tho they look ok, they were fibre glass.
 
vette said:
Since then I've learned how to wheel and made my own pieces for the next time. Actually I made these after the body was finished as practice. And now I will keep them as patch panels if, god forbid, I should ever need them. They fit the wooden buck prefectly and I made the buck from the fender that I took off the car and it fit prefectly. the reason I changed the rear fenders even tho they look ok, they were fibre glass.
Click to expand...

Nice work! You realize of course, that those patch panels will only fit YOUR car. Every Healey is different.

The shop that painted mine had a guy come in with his 100. The rear fenders were bad so he had sold them and bought new. Well, the new ones were so off that he had to buy the old ones back, for more than he sold them for, repair them and put them back on.
 
I believe ya. When I saw how badly the new fenders fit my car, I almost put the fibre glass ones back on. Actually the fibre glass fenders were a very good quality build. I didn't mind having them on there for 7 years. but when it came time to restore, I wanted everything steel again. My car had been rally prepped back in the early '70s and everything that could be lightened with glass was done. the trunk lid, the rocker panels and the fenders.
Heres something you might find interesting. Did you ever see a BJ7 with separate running lights and turn signal lights in the front. Similar to the BJ8 except that my lights are the small diameter glass lens type as all earlier Lucas lights were. Not the larger plastic as in the BJ8s. I believe one of the restoration guides speaks of it. It is fairly rare.
 
vette said:
Heres something you might find interesting. Did you ever see a BJ7 with separate running lights and turn signal lights in the front. Similar to the BJ8 except that my lights are the small diameter glass lens type as all earlier Lucas lights were. Not the larger plastic as in the BJ8s. I believe one of the restoration guides speaks of it. It is fairly rare.
Click to expand...

That would b e a German export car. Here's one for sale at Legendary Motorcar listing the unique features: Jawohl!
 
Yep. I don't mean to hi-jack this post about door gaps. But your right. My British Heritage Certificate says it was delivered to Stugard.
 
The original door gap fit is 3/16"gap. The English were not on the metric system then or now. Healeys from the factory never came with shims under the hinges. This is only done when the dimensional integrity of the car has been altered. I have restructured over 400 cars and have found that when then the chassis and the structure are put back to true and original spec the panels are very consistent in fit from one car to another. these panels were not hand made. They were stamped.
Structural failure effects panel fit. Generally it will be the rear fenders that have been changed at the door edge due to chassis failures. This may have happened right on the assembly line or shortly after the care was driven.
In my opinion the best fender replacement fenders currently available are the aluminum ones from AH Spares.
I would be happy to discuss this further with anyone if you wish to give me a call.
Martin Jansen
Jule Enterprises
 
Hello Martin, I think I can certainly agree with you and I respect your experience because your reputation preceeds you. And it is good. Just to continue the conversation. I do remember that when I bought the rear fenders from a promenant supplier, I was told that they would be non-returnable and they pretty well knew that there had been fit problems with these fenders. I thought well, they can't be that bad, I'll just have to make some fitting alterations. Well, I had never seen a fender fit a body so poorly. I inspected my frame very well and my door opennings and the previous pieces I took off had good gaps. So I decided to make the fenders fit. The rear fender arches were as much as 1/2 inch higher than the body in the crown. I cut the flanges off and used heat shrinking methods along with shrinking jaws to tighten up the radius' to match the body. I do know that the original panels were stamped and i believe it was Jensen Corp that made them.
But considering that many, many big Healey frames and bodies have gotten teaked over the years and miles, i believe that there would be fit problems with almost anybodys source. Unless you go to the extent that you do with the new frames or very extensive realignment. Which I believe many
a shop that has done Healeys do not do.
 
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