67 coupe door alignment

[g.r.rogers]

Just put my doors back on and matching up with the body lines and making adjustments as necessary to body lines. Noticed the passengers door top side fits tighter or closer the roof than the drivers side. I honestly can't remember if they ever fit just right prior to stripping.I can flow the doors in to match but am open to any ideas from experienced door hangers who have restored their cars in this case a coupe.Thanks GRR#33570

[Joe L.]

Re: 67 coupe door alignment

"g.r."------

The fit of coupe doors on 1963-67 Corvettes was very problematic from the day the cars were built. Apparently, there was some sort of engineering specification "mistake" made which resulted in the doors being a poor fit to the body opening. By the time the "mistake" was discovered, the tooling for the parts had already been produced from the erroneously spec'd drawings. So, it was not "practical" to create a proper fix within the restraints of GM corporate office-driven economics.

For 1967, some of the door fitment problems were supposedly fixed, but I have observed many 67 cars which suffer from the problem, so, apparently, the "fix" was not effective, or, at least, not effective on all 67s.

Several years ago, I attended a succession annual workshops at Bloomington which were called "Once Upon a Time at the Corvette Plant". The workshops were conducted by the George Barlos, the late Phil Hawkins, and several other former Corvette plant employees. George worked at the Corvette plant in St. Louis for many years and Phil worked there from 1955 until it closed in 1981. One of the tales that they told was of the fitment methodologies used by plant employess to install the ill-fitting doors on 63-67 coupes. Apparently, since GM refused to recognize the problem and the plant was left to solve the problem so they could get cars out the door, they developed some sort of crude, "worker-powered" "bending apparatus" to "reconfigure" the doors so that they would fit on the car well enough to get them on their way to dealers.

The manifestations of this problem are seen in mid-years to this day, since it is a fundamental problem that is difficult to correct in SERVICE. The phenomenon of being "able to see daylight" when seated inside the car and looking at the door/body gap is one of these manifestations.

As a matter of fact, about 10 years ago, or so, when I was looking to buy a 65-66 coupe I inspected MANY potential candidates. I found this problem on every car I looked at to one degree or another. It bothered me so much that I finally gave up on the 65-66 search and bought a brand new '92 LT-1. Of course, that's just my opinion and personal idiosyncrasy; I just, PERSONALLY, could not accept this "flaw".

[Paul Y.]

Re: 67 coupe door alignment

Good morning,

It sounds like you need a shim between the hinge and door on the top one. I was able to align the doors on my 63 coupe a couple of months ago without too much trouble so I will be glad to help you if I can. Did you install new weatherstrip yet? Some of that will need to take a set. Did you save the shims? If you didn't notice any they might be in the bottom of your door.

Let me know how you come out. Paul

[Stewart L.]

Re: 67 coupe door alignment

The way to align the coupe doors that I have used is to install the weatherstrip , then close the door with the bolts finger tight. Set the striker so the rear fits, then add shims at the hinge mount to get the front of the door to align with the fender. Then loosen the hinge bolts and have a helper move the front of the door up or down until you find the best fit and then tighten the bolts. With a lot of trial and error , get the lower part of the door to fit as good as possible. Then, bend the upper part of the door for the inout fit at the roof line. If that is not good enough, adding fiberglass to low areas on the door or body is the next option. I know that is a simple discription of something you can spend a day on. There are several different surfaces that need to align, and every time you change one adjustment, the opposite coroner is affected.