First Generation Firebird-L Mailing List ......................................................................... My car and the few I've paid attention to had some amount of shims to raise the cowl panel to match the fender. You could try aligning the fender and door without respect to the cowl and then shim the cowl to match. If we consider your gap being large at the bottom of the door and so small at the top, raising the fender and door together will narrow the gap at the bottom and open the gap at the top. My car had between 3/8" and 1/2" of shims setting the fender higher up. I wish now that I had measured/tagged and bagged them. It does seem that either the rear of the fender is too low, or the front it too high. Did you install stock subframe bushings or aluminum bushings?
Larry --- On Tue, 3/31/09, S Sterchi <[email protected]> wrote: From: S Sterchi <[email protected]> Subject: RE: [FGF] Fender & Door Alignment To: [email protected] Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 10:30 PM First Generation Firebird-L Mailing List ......................................................................... These are original fenders as far as I know. They were on the car in 1988 when I bought it. I am using three fat shims on each fender approx. 1/8" each on the top of the cowl to bring the fenders up in line with the doors. This gives a good match for the top of the fender to cowl panel without any shims under the cowl panel. The rocker to door gap looks good and is based on matching the top of the door to the quarter (level) and the body line of door to quarter. The rocker to door gap measures the same at both quarter and fender sides. I did the body work on these fenders while off the car, which is a big mistake. I put a lot of filler in them and welded in some 2x2 patches down at the bottom. This may have tweaked the fenders a bit and contributes to the larger gap at the bottom. But, the body work shouldn't have anything to do with the door pinching the fender at the top on the D-side. Problem #1, i.e. door hits fender if open any further than it is open in this pic. http://s97.photobucket.com/albums/l206/sheenster_2006/?action=view¤t=DDoorGapHalfOpen-Problem.jpg P-side, same shot, no problem. Notice the angles are very different. The door on the P-side actually swings out and misses the tight point on the D-side by a long shot. http://s97.photobucket.com/albums/l206/sheenster_2006/?action=view¤t=PDoorGaphalfopen-NoProblem.jpg Problem #2, i.e. the door gap at the bottom is HUGE. I can stick my finger through it. http://s97.photobucket.com/albums/l206/sheenster_2006/?action=view¤t=DDoorBottom.jpg I measured the rad support bushing to be approx. 11/16-inch while on the car. Probably a little off with my measurement since calipers are hard to get in there. http://s97.photobucket.com/albums/l206/sheenster_2006/?action=view¤t=RadBushingapprox11-16thinch.jpg I think if I could somehow get the rad support down about 1/8" it would translate to clear the problem with the D-door binding with the fender and bring the gap at the bottom of the door closer. Thanks, Sheen _________________________________________________________________ Show them the way! Add maps and directions to your party invites. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/products/events.aspx ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Submissions to Firebird-L: <[email protected]> Unsubscribe from Firebird-L: <[email protected]> Help: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/firebird/Firebird-L.html> Classifieds: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/ubb/> Owner Pictures: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/show/> Donations: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/store/cart.mv?999999> FGF Merchandise: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/store> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Submissions to Firebird-L: <[email protected]> Unsubscribe from Firebird-L: <[email protected]> Help: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/firebird/Firebird-L.html> Classifieds: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/ubb/> Owner Pictures: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/show/> Donations: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/store/cart.mv?999999> FGF Merchandise: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/store>
