71Beeper
Well-Known Member
- Local time
- 9:28 AM
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2010
- Messages
- 1,047
- Reaction score
- 1,645
- Location
- Stoney Creek, Ontario
Awesome work as usual Chad!
I like 1/4”gaps. 3/16” always turns into 1/8” after body work. And that is just to tight in my opinion. Tight gaps look good at the car shows. But I’ll take not chipping paint and room for error on my stuff.Wow, another month since my last update. Time does fly. I haven’t had much time to work on the road runner - family obligations, holidays, etc. I’ve been sporadically working on getting the gaps done over the past month. Before doing the fitment, I lowered the road runner on braces that I placed about where the wheels would be. I had almost the entire day today to continue work. Yay! I started on the passenger’s side door fitment as I knew this would be the bigger pita from when I installed the quarters. The bottom corner area of the quarter was stamped a little off or something. The gap between the door and quarter was tighter starting near the body line and grew wider toward the bottom. I sliced this area open and tapped the narrower area in and pried the wider area out, closer to the door. I then welded it up. The best I can get is 3/16” gaps.
I then addressed the rocker to door bottom fit. The gap here was wider at the latch side from about the midpoint of the door back toward the latch. I made several tack welds to build up this area then sanded it down. The best I could do on this gap (and driver’s side) is 1/4”.
From what I’ve seen on the internet checking other ‘71’s, it looks, to me anyway, gaps are all over the place. This will be a driver so I’m not too concerned with having gaps that may not be perfect.
Car on braces, rough fitment:View attachment 1582263
Gap not so good in this area (that’s what she said):
View attachment 1582264
View attachment 1582265
Door/rocker too:
View attachment 1582266
Sliced:
View attachment 1582267
Welded up:
View attachment 1582268
Bottom of door too:
View attachment 1582269
It’s hard to tell the gap sizes in the photos. They look a lot better in person. At least that’s what I keep telling myself!
Thanks for looking!