re Adjusting 34 Cabriolet Doors

[JR48]

A while back I took a scan of a page from a Ford Bulletin that I found on-line of a page of detailed instructions on the adjustment of 34 Cabriolet doors. Unfortunately and stupidly the scan I made was so low resolution that when I printed it I cannot read the issue or page number of the relevant Ford Bulletin and my copy of the Ford Bulletin Book does not have it in for some reason. Does anybody recollect seeing this article, it's headed 'Door Adjustment' ?

[Flathead Fever]

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I'm not an expert. I did the roadster door alignment one time, years ago, on my'32 Brookville Roadster body on an original chassis. It was a mess. To begin with I had to bend the lower cast brass hinges to get rid of a huge gap between the lower edge of the door and the quarter panel. There was noway around it the hinges had to be bent. I could not believe what a horrible fit the doors were. I thought for sure the hinges would break while bending them in a big vise but they bent. Then the doors had a big twist in them from the top to the bottom of their rear edge, they were probably off a 1/2" So I just grabbed them and twisted them until they were flush with the quarter panels on the top and bottom. It could be that the tops of quarter panels were sticking in or out too far from not being jigged up properly? On a factory body you should not need to deal with any of that. So Cal Speed shop was welding in a piece with a turn buckles into the Brookville bodies to adjust the tops of the quarter panels and stiffen them up.

What you will deal with is having to get gap between the door and the quarter panel even. On my '32, the top rear corners of the doors were tight against the quarter panels, even overlapping them a little. While the bottom were okay on both sides after I had bent the lower hinges. What worked best for me was to bolt the four corners of the body down. Then I put a floor-jack and a block of wood under the floor beneath the door gap on the driver's side and jacked it up until the upper door gap spread apart to where I wanted it. Then I installed automotive alignment shims between the body and frame and tightened them down. It looked perfect. Then I did the same thing to the passenger side but when I went back to the driver's side my perfect gap had changed. It took a few trips back and forth to get both sides looking good.

Dorman makes alignment shims in different thicknesses. Harbor freight sells a 144 piece assortment for $9.99. You can order them on Amazon too. The advantage is these shims are open on one side so you can just slide them in around the bolt without have to remove the bolt each time. They also have a little tab for removing them since you will be doing this a few times before your happy with it.