Quote:
Originally Posted by 40 Deluxe
Without rubber mounts to absorb chassis flex (or at least a portion of it) you may soon see cracks in the body sheet metal as now it has to absorb the flex that rubber body mounts did before you removed them.
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He beat me to it. I second that motion
highly.
Besides that, the '55 cars did not have the safety door latches either and if you replace rubber mounts with solid mounts, I would not be surprised if you begin to experience doors popping open when you go over a bump in the road, railroad tracks or anything worse. However that might be remedied by getting a set of 1956 Ford striker plates but you have to get the '56 door latch mechanisms to mate with them.
The shop manual says body mounting bolts should be torqued down 18-30 ft/lbs. On both my body-off-frame restorations, I probably leaned on the lighter side of 18 ft/lbs. IMO, the main thing here is to have an installation that will prevent the body from sliding forward-backward or from side to side. So if the tapered rubber washers on top are good or have been replaced with new ones and the special washers are snugged down good, there should be no horizontal movement of any kind.
My cars are drivers and this Fordor has been thru the wringer for decades yet I have never had a problem with body creep (movement) or doors popping open in traffic even though they were never properly adjusted until recently.