Door hinges and painting.

[rponfick]

I think I can safely say that we have all had our issues with the door hinge design. I am getting close to being happy with all the machining, cutting, tapping, adjusting and fitting of the doors. Once I get them where I want them, I am terrified at the thought of having to tear everything apart for body finishing and painting.
Those of you that have fitted your doors after painting, would you like to offer some words of advice.
I was planning to take the cab off for painting, but to do that you have to loosen or remove all the hinge supports and hinges themselves. Has anyone painted the cab on the chassis. If you removed the cab, how did you re-attach the doors after paint? I can see adding a lot of masking tape to the edge areas, but this still seems like a risky process, considering how hard the adjustments can be. I have drilled small pilot holes in Corvette hinges in the past to guide re-assembly of them, but not sure if you can get to all the places on these supports/hinges to drill pilots. I have also spray painted over the bolt heads to aid in re-assembly.
Your wise comments would be appreciated.
Ralph

[bnelson]

Ralph I share your fear. I just took mine all apart and am dreading having to get the doors in place again. I did leave the front brackets that bolt to the frame in place. That should help a little. I took pictures of the position of everything else so hopefully can get it close first shot and just have to do some fine tuning. I did take the doors completely apart including inner brackets and window mechanism but marked all those on the inside so should be good going back in. Good luck!
Bruce

[Robodent]

I can only offer how I did my build. Not saying its right or wrong just my thought process on how I did mine. The hinges were a issue to think about for me as well. I removed my cab to paint it. I drilled all my holes in the sill plate area of the cab and firewall as well before removing it so I knew exactly where the cab needed to go back after paint. I marked the cab side of my hinges very well so I knew where they had to go back. I did not remove the door side of the hinges. I left them on the doors and taped them off my thought was the door would kitty womp and get way out of alignment if they were removed.
In the end it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be getting everything lined back up. I sat my cab on a 6’ shop table with a couple jack stands supporting the front to paint. Having the cab off to paint was a much cleaner paint job with no masking lines . Rob. 120858

[DamnYankee]

I also had issues getting my doors lined up, so I was worried about reassembly.
So I painted mine with the cab on the chassis. Before disassembly I took closeup pics of each hinge to help me realign them. I removed all the hinges and marked each hinge so I knew exactly where it belonged (I also painted the hinges). The brackets on the chassis remained in place.
I kept the frame inside the doors and riveted it so it didn't move.
Reassembly was fairly easy, only some minor hinge adjustments needed.

120868

[wallace18]

My doors were painted on the chassis with the cab. This way all the work to make them right was not harmed. It took a lot of careful masking off but it was worth it, IMO.