Trunk lid factory gap too much?

[Valkster]

Good evening, all. We have the hood sitting in its opening, and doors and trunk lid mounted...working on gapping all of it. The body seems to be where it needs to be... the body is about 1/4" in front of door latch plate, front nose centered side-to-side and floating on front rubber bushings. I have read that I need to dial-in and gap trunk lib before the doors (true?). When I installed the trunk lid with hinges and rubber seal, I have what I believe to be a problem. The lid was pretty generously cut from the factory, and I have just a little to remove at the rear and along the sides. There is also a little to remove at the very front of the lid, but my front corners appear to be cut way too much already. I have done no trimming yet, please see pics below. Right now, with calipers, I am getting a heavy 5/16 at both front corners...I can actually put my index finger in the gap and to me it looks too wide when looking back at the corners from the front of the car (also in a pic). Is this common, and if so, what is the best plan to correct? I have the 3M HSRF but not sure that I should use this for rebuilding an edge. Worst case, I have about an 1/8 inch to build up. Would HSFR be ok if I actually need to build the corner, or should I go back to deeper prep and use fiberglass mat and polyester resin to fix it?

Oh, the hood looks generously trimmed from the factory, too, but looks like I can gap it well. The doors are actually tight, so I have plenty to work with to get them correct.

Thanks,
Mark

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[Valkster]

Oh, just to clarify, the rear vertical part of the trunk lid is flush with the body, so I think the lid is moved forward as far as possible.

[Jeff Kleiner]

Move the kid to the left to set the gap on the right side with no or minimal trimming. This will close up the gap on the LH forward radius and you then trim along the left edge.

Jeff

[Valkster]

Thanks for the reply, Jeff. I tried that today after work but unfortunately that won't fix it (please see pics). Even shifting the lid completely left as far as it will go, the driver's side upper corner gap is still way too wide (just under 5/16"). At the same time, the PS upper corner gap is now at more than 5/16", as is a short section of the PS vertical portion of the lid. It seems the best I can do is shift it to the right as far as I can, gap that side, then gap the left and "build up" the left (DS) upper corner. An alternate approach would be to center it or shift to the left as suggested, but then I will have multiple places to build up, but to a lesser amount. I must have had a newbie cut the trunk lid a few years ago, lol. This brings my original question back up...can I build the corner up with 3M HSFR or is that a no-no? I'll be building up an area approximately 1/8" wide to close the gap. Thanks for any input.

Mark

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[rich grsc]

As it is such a small amount, consider building up the inside corner of the body. For that you can use body filler

[Valkster]

I looked into filling the corners of the body with body filler, I hadn't thought of that, thanks for the suggestion. However, the radius is not the only part FFR overcut. Both the lead-in and lead-out of the radius on both sides are also overcut. To fill it in to make the gap look good makes me feel like I will have a noticeable "dog leg" on the straight part of the gap leading into the corners. I could be wrong since I haven't done this before, but it was a concern. After some fretting over it, I decided to grind down the gel coat and fiberglass on both sides of the affected areas, then build the corner up with some fiberglass mat and HSFR. I basically ground 3/4"-1" wide areas on both sides of the panel into the fiberglass deep enough to add some matting, then wrapped MSFR soaked mats over the area until it was built out enough to repair the overcut. The patch pics now don't look great, but the area is saturated and full of mat, so it should be good later. I'll post follow up pics after it is done. Thanks for the input.

Mark

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[Valkster]

After repairing a hood "oops" I am trying to set the trunk in its final position. I have had a lot of issues getting it to gap and look good, and plan to put a few roll pins in the hinge components so I do not have to do this after paint.

I have had it correctly centered left-to-right so I could set my body centerline for some time now. However, I have run myself around in circles trying to get the lid to have a smooth transition along its surface to the body all around. At this point I am looking good everywhere but in the front center of the trunk lid. This is the area nearest the roll bars, and directly between them. The lid sits a little low in this spot. If I raise the lid, then the corners and part of the lid transitioning to the rear are too high. I stuck one of the larger rubber bumpers that came with the kit in the front center of the body and this corrected it, but it really doesn't fit there, and all the posts I have read indicate I should not need a spacer there. Is there something I am missing in the adjustment process?

Thanks,
Mark

[Jeff Kleiner]

I was going to suggest a using bumper in the center to help flush out the lid to body at that point. They don't need it often...maybe one out of twenty...but if it works, it works.

Jeff

[Valkster]

Ok, thanks...I'll find a better fitting bumper for that area and go with it.

-Mark

[Valkster]

I wanted to post a follow up on this topic for any with trunk lid bow issues. Since I have been working on other parts of the body since this original post, I had not really finished the trunk lid "bow" along the front edge not matching the contour of the body. The rubber bumper worked but I didn't like how it looked, and how I would have had to trim the trunk seal for it to fit. After searching online and a few posts on this forum, I decided to try heat to change the bow of the trunk lid along its front edge. I basically flipped the trunk lid on it back on my workbench and set a stack of 2x lumber in the middle of the trunk. Then I placed a longer 2x on top of that stack oriented along the front edge of the lid and used a few clamps to gently pull the corners of the trunk lid toward the longer 2X. I didn't pull too much with the clamps, but I estimated my trunk needed to be sprung about 3/8". I put about 1/2" pull on the corners of the lid, figuring they would spring back a bit after unclamping them. Finally, I heated the trunk lid slowly and carefully on both sides where I wanted to change the bow until I reached and maintained 150ish degrees F for a few minutes. This took a while, and after I stopped adding heat the temps on the panel stayed pretty high for several minutes. I did this twice, checking the bow after the first attempt, and increased the heat a little more on the second attempt. I was using a cheap HF infrared thermometer, so my readings were approximate anyway. IT WORKED! The lid matches the body along the front edge from left to right now without a rubber bumper in the middle of it. Just an FYI that was worth trying.

[ggunter]

Add some glass to the corner of the lid and sand to your liking.