mmaki

Hi,

I have a '89 Firebird coupe that I am working on, with the help of a 86 ws6 doner car from my youth.

The body panels on this car don't fit well. The doors have at least 1/4" gap between the rear of the door and the pillar. The striker bolts have additional 1/8" washers underneath to reach the latch. Also, both doors are recessed a little at the top but protrude proud of the body at the bottom.

The hatch extends about a 1/4" further than it should at the rear and the top hatch glass doesn't follow the roof line very well. The adjustment slots are bottomed out. I put a shim under one hinge so it would conform to the roof line better, which it does, but now it twists when it closes.

The front fenders fit like hell, but I am not concerned about that as I am putting the fenders from the 86 on.

I know I can fix the doors by enlarging holes and using spacers, but I would like to know if this is common or is there something else going on.

There is accident damage at the front bumper, but it seems to be contained in that area. The car has received a cheap paint job, but I am pretty sure there are no signs of a more serious accident. The hood, doors and fenders show no sign of receiving work. The car is solid with only a few areas of minor rust underneath where the undercoating came off.

The 86 TA doner car fits together much better. Only about a 1/16" gap at the rear of the doors and they are straight with the body. Unfortunetly there is nothing left underneath after sitting on the grass for many years.

Mike

92RS(real slow)

My only guees is that the accidnet may have damaged the car more than is noticable by the naked eye, becuase the hatch shouldn't be sticking out that far, but then again what do I know

ScottyRS

iTrader: (2)

He says the hatch only extends about 1/4". I'd say that's about normal. Remember these aren't Bentleys. These cars were mass produced on assembly lines. So not everything is going to fit like a glove. The rest of your car, however, seems to be beat to hell. The doors shouldn't be like that. What kind of shape are the hinges in? Those doors are long, heavy, and part of the cars uni-body structure (I suggest you don't tamper with the striker bolt), so they go through a lot over the years.

87TPI350KID

If it helps, my car is a great condition black car, which means it was a better fitting car from the factory and it hasnt been wrecked and the panels line up very well.

On my buds sport coupe, it got smacked ont eh front end (it was a red car) and we placed 2 white fenders (usually the crappy aligning cars get painted white) on the body and it lined up pretty crappy. I would try bolting up the top of the fender and using shim on the other side of the car to align the panels.

92RS(real slow)

didn't realize he said it was only a 1/4 inch yeah thats about right

jimmyj2000

I've never heard of this stuff about fit and finish determining body color. So what you're saying is it goes something like this:
GM Assembly Line Worker: "This car isn't quite going together right, I need to shim the panels in a couple of places."
GM Quality Control Guy: "Nah, don't worry about it, we'll just paint that one white."

Randy82WS7

yeah its common for stuff to not be lined up well on vehicles

see it all the time, if oyu inspect enouh different vehicles you cna spot all kinds of misalignments and excess gaps and other problems, even on brand new vehicles,

the hatch sticking out past 1/4" is VERY common to see,

see it on at least half of all these cars, evne mine is screwed up like this,

nothing out of the ordinary here

you gotta shim and make stuff line up any way that you can

thats just how it is in the autobody world

egg holes out, add or take out shims

whatever you gotta do, do it

its normal


these cars and their parts were mass produced, punched/pressed on big machines of several tons of pressure,

if they didnt get perfectly aligned in the machine before getitng punched or pressed then theyre going ot be off by that much from what they were intended to be

this happened to alot of parts, tons of them are off to some degree, may ot even have been any perfectly aligned ones punch/pressed,

ppl pressing them were ppl like you and me, day job, you dont want ot be there doing this all day, you want ot go home, alot of ppl dont do a perfect job, so that means alot of parts that arent perfect, this goes for everything in this world

and is why we have autobody techs, to fix/massage problems like this on vehicles, because it exists, al over the place


good luck

ResurrectingZ

How come I only get white camaros if they are all crappy aligned?

86 IROC was black repainted white
87 IROC was white repainted flat black (it was stolen before I got it)
88 IROC was white (severely beaten donor car)

I will be repainting the 87 IROC gloss black so its not so crappy.

1989karr

I think I got the worst gaps.....The car is in the garage and most of the pieces like fenders are in my room....so my gaps are actually several yards lol.

Oh but to the original poster with all the alignment issues for the doors, my driver side was pretty bad. The bottom stuck in a little, and the top of the door stuck about I think just under half an inch. Took it to the body shop and they easily fixed it, but not sure what they did though. Could it have been the door pins were shot? Might want to look into those for your car.

87TPI350KID

Its true. Most of the newer cars are much better fitting, but a few years ago, if you go look at the white cars then the black ones, the black ones usually fit better. Black shows every imperfection. I saw 3-4 ford focuses that were white and the trunk lid was off prob 3/4 inch.. door jams werent flush. The black focuses were near perfect. maybe its just a theory, but it seems to be true.

mmaki

I don't know about the black white thing as particuliar car is black and like I said, it doesn't fit together well. My guess would be the cars that went together well became TA's or Z28's, the lousy ones, base models.

Mike