[larrys40]

Marshall
I’ve done my fair share of body aligments and a number of them in wood subrailed ones.
I think the gap you are talking about is above the doors yet the belt lines line up . Correct ? I have seen this on some 4 doors at times. I think some of it stems from either a sub rail vertical support issue and possibly that’s how that particular body was built. Yea they used jigs for much of those but it seems like the roofs even at the back doors were a bit too high. Possible upper body assembly issue when new.
I’ve seen enough of these that it does make you scratch your head a bit and wonder I think like you are what is the cause.

What I can say is make sure all your body hinges aren’t sagging any, if so you would probably be scraping the rear fender curve on rhxrear door and sill on the front … which I take you are not.
I’m happy to chat with you on it. I’m in the MAN in back…

As you know these things take careful analysis and process to fix… sometimes just splitting differences. They were production cars that weren’t always perfect and relied on the workers who were doing the jobs at hand. I think as much as we want to think they were all perfect they were not. I’ve seen many differences over the years even on untouched originals.
Larry Shepard