Passenger Door Fitting

The passenger door didn't really fit so well on the Pantera. It had been reskinned and the lines were never checked or properly fitted. The front of the door caught the front quarter panel when you opened the door. If you didn't have a scraper handy to help guide the door past the quarter panel you would experience a real nice pop as you forced the door open.

To fix this I took a ruler and measured the driver's side door gap between the front quarter and the door as well as the rear quarter and the door. I traced out a line on the passenger door that would match the gaps on the driver's side.

I then removed the door. This has always been a real scary prospect for me in the past. I'm use to large cars (my 66 Galaxie for instance) where the door weight about 100 lbs and removing it almost guarantees you will never get it adjusted correctly again.

Two things about the Pantera doors I really like. One - it is light - I mean really light. I was able to hold the door up with just my foot propped up under it as I removed the screws. Second thing is that the screws holding the hinge to the front quarter panel are not adjustment screws like on other cars I have worked on. They simply hold the door onto the car! What a good idea. That means that when I put the door back on it will line up just as it did before I removed it. WOW that's the way it should be with all cars!

So after taking out the six bolts holding the door to the car, I took the door over to the work bench and carefully ground down the edges to the lines I measured out on the car. This eliminated the rolled edge of the metal in some places that needed to be trimmed pretty aggressively. Once all the cuts were made I pulled out the MIG welder.

I slowly and carefully welded up all my cut edges. Being careful not to heat warp the new skin, I was able to lay a decent bead where the raw edges were before. I then took my grinder and used a 60 grit sand paper "flapper" designed pad. This is the pad that has 20 or so flaps of paper molded into a pad that attaches to the angle grinder. This allows me to carefully remove the weld without taking off too much metal at one time and minimizing heat to the skin.

After 20 or so minutes of careful grinding I had a really nice edge. Some filler and you will never know it was welded in the first place. I cleaned up some surface rust spots and sealed the bare metal with Rustoleum. I also took the opportunity of having the door off to clean up the mounting surface and the door latch surface and seal that too. I tall came out looking nice.

I rehung the door and wouldn't you know it, the lines look great. I was thinking this job was going to be pretty taxing but found it to be amazingly easy due to how De Tomaso designed the door hinges. Loving this car!