I really need some help and search hasn't been my friend.

I have a 6/70 car that had its doors & strikes removed for paint.  The doors and strikes are now back on the car.  Both doors line up great but both need to be slammed pretty hard in order for them to latch. Is there a technique to aligning the strike other than total guesswork?

The car doesn't have any weather strip on it yet and both doors closed perfectly prior to the latches being removed.

I should note that I don't have the dovetails installed on the doors yet. I could see how that might help a little bit but they seem to break easily if under too much stress.

Any advice? 
Thanks

Maybe you had it (the car) on a 2 post lift without the doors in it?   (People don't laugh)  (read other questions..haha to know what the *** i'm talking about) 

There can be some tension in the doors, it's a lot of trail and error to fit the doors back in, Don't over tighten the bolts, at first tighten them just enough.. they could set themselves in a sertain direction..  It cán take easely an hour (or a few...) to do a door correct.

When alining the doors remember that there are no adjustments on the door itself,  the hinges and receiver are fixed so all your adjustment is in where the hinges attach to the body and the striker. I start with all 6 hinge bolts installed loosely and only lightly tighten the top most bolt on each hinge while lining it it up. It sounds from your description that the striker needs to be loosened and pulled out a bit but while you are at it loosen the two lower  bolts on each hinge on the body so there is no binding. If you get your eye down to the level of the striker you can actually watch it engage with the receiver while holding a light on the other side of the door.  After you get the door closing nicely then slowly tighten the other hinge bolts while checking the clearance.

As dutchzcarguy mentioned, do all of your adjusting with the car on the ground and not jacked up.

20 hours ago, grannyknot said:

remember that there are no adjustments on the door itself

Maybe, some adjusting is in the height of the door by loosening the stainless edge..     Nice write up  Grannyknot!  

When alining you can also use a piece of paper to check air tightness  (on trunk important related to exhaustgases coming in to the car!)

Thanks for the comments everyone.  After thinking it through a bit, and since my front fenders are removed, it seems like I should first focus on aligning and gaping the doors to the rockers and to the 'b' pillars.   Then align the fenders to the doors later?

Sure that will work but you may still have to shift the fender side of the door a bit once the fender is back on, the gaps are all in relation to one another.  If you haven't yet it's always a good idea to run strip of masking tape around the edges of each panel/door, it's so easy chip the edges when you are moving things around.  Also, make sure you have the main door seal is installed before you do final adjustment on the door.

When setting doors, I do it the other way. I get the door on the car, then I set the fenders and get the door aligned well with the fender and "A" pillar. Then I check the rear alignment. The door can be twisted to make the rear edge correct. There are not many options to adjust the door fender alignment. Shim the hinges or shim the fender, but the curvature and the detail line are set. So the door needs to line up with those. The only rear adjustments for the rear of the doors are some minor fore/aft adjustment, some up/down adjustment and depth of closure based on the strike location. My passenger side door is on the car and adjusted currently and you can tell there is no gasket in it. It clunks around with lots of free movement. If you don't have that, then the gasket will never work.

@patcon what method do you use to twist the door?


72 body and block, everything else 71, Tokico springs, Illumina, R180 CLSD, 83 close ratio, 3.90 gears, Ztherapy SUs, BRE 15X7 Libre wheels and BRE front spoiler.

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