Okay I'm doing the final fitment of all my doors, fenders, hood and truck lid before paint. I have the doors the best I can get them but still have some very minor differences in the gaps and panel to panel levelness. I have had the fenders on already and I was all over the place. So went back to resetting the doors and before putting the fenders back on just want to know just how good was the factory settings? I have newly rebuilt OEM hinges if you need to know. Also do I need to put everything back into doors first or can these adjustments be made after paint? I HOPE NOT THIS HAS POWER WINDOWS AND THATS ANOTHER ISSUE PUTTING THEM BACK IN.

 

The gaps and fitment of the 70-72 A body is atrocious by today's standards. Unless you spend big $$$$ at a custom shop you'll have those uneven gaps between fender/door and door quarter panel. Same with the front of the hood and stone shield. The factory 'quality control' was a bit of a joke. I've seen cars come to the dealer in 73 with gaps as large as 1/2" and uneven lineup of the hoods to header panels that made them look like kids built them.

You can paint your car/doors and put the power windows in afterwards. That saves a lot of weight when maneuvering them into position

 

Wow!!! then mine will look perfect! I have done a lot of body work already correcting most but will not be a 6 figure car standard and this is not going to be.
Will be interesting to hear how others have dealt with this.
Thanks Allan!

 

^^^THIS. The way custom shops get better gaps is to weld metal onto the edges of the panels and grind/file to fit. That's called "over-restoring".

FYI, modern vehicles are constructed in such a way that the whole side of the car is a single stamping. This allows for much tighter tolerance control on openings and thus gap sizes. Our vintage cars use numerous separate panels (roof, firewall, quarter, A-pillar, floor, rocker) that must all be aligned and welded. This process is inherently more prone to wider tolerance stackups and thus more variability in panel gaps.

 

Thanks Joe this make me feel better and that I'll have as close to factory if not a little better. I can now stop beating myself up over this, I want to get to final paint this fall so I can start the final assembly over the winter. This paint prep is never ending it seams.