door alignment

[studeboy28]

Any body have experience with adjusting a front door on a prewar commander/president body? My 1940 Cpommander is almost done at the paint shop after 2 1/2 years. The worker who removed the doors is long gone. When they went to put them back on the front doors fit well and close fine but.... the lower rear corners of both front doors stick out farther than the surface of the rear doors. There are shims and adjustment slots for the rear doors and these are mentioned in the manual but I can find no reference to adjustments of the front door other than to some vague reference to bending the hinges with a special tool. Are these lower corners supposed to stick out ?? Are there really no shims or adjustments for the front doors??


28 dictator
40 commander

[gordr]

A good body man should know what has to be done. I have a Studebaker friend who owns a '39 Commander street rod, and he is a top-flight body man as well. I'm sure he has dealt with this. Send me an e-mail via the link, and I'll give you his telephone number.

Sometimes, you have to bend the entire door itself. But first, look at how the door is attached: a hinge at the window sill level, and one near the bottom. The latch on the rear edge is somewhere in between. Remember your high-school geometry? It takes 3 points to define a plane in space. So if that car door is a structure attached to that plane, it follows that altering any of those three points will shift the plane, and thereby the door.

Now moving the striker in or out on the pillar will move the entire back edge of the door in or out, but if the bottom corner is too far "out" relative to the top, that won't change. (I'm disregarding instances where the top of the door contacts the body, and the door is forced to bend and pull in the bottom when it is closed. We'll stipulate that any adjustment NOT cause the door to be stressed in a bend, OK?)

So, adjusting the striker won't cure that bottom corner, will it? Now, take a look at the front edge of the door. Is it nice and square with the "A" pillar, or is it maybe "in" a bit at the top? If the latter, maybe putting a shim between the top hinge and the door will bring it out a bit. I'm pretty sure your door hinges attach to the inside face of the door like they do on later models. That will also cause the rear lower corner to pull in a bit, because the entire plane of the door will rotate slightly about the line joining the striker and the lower hinge. Within reason, one can "float" the entire door within the opening, as well as change the orientation of the plane in which it lies.

Now if those door hinges attach to the front edge of the door, shims there will act to raise/lower the latch with respect to the striker, but won't do much for that pesky rear corner. One will have to either slide the hinge attachment point on slotted holes (if provided) to either the body or the door, or perhaps bend the hinge arm. In your specific case, if the front edge of the door fits fine, I'd simply put a block of 2X4 between the latch and the striker, and push by hand on the lower corner of the door until you think it "gives" a little, then try it for fit. Bend a bit more if it needs it; if you've over-bent, move the wood block to the bottom of the door, and push in the middle. Pat (my friend with the '39) showed me this trick many years ago. If you are leery of doing it on your '40, try on a parts car, or on a wreck at the junkyard. It's really not that hard to get a feel for what's happening. Really what you are doing is bending the inner structure of the door; the outer skin is pretty flexible, and simply follows along.

Hope this helps; don't hesitate to e-mail me for Pat's number, I'm sure he'd take a few minutes to chat with another Commander owner.

Gord Richmond, within Weasel range of the Alberta Badlands