Absolutely the only body flaw on '84 is that when you open the driver's side door it crushes the quarter panel. I just figure it had been hung badly. Then today I saw another 7 in the parking lot and it looked like the exact same thing was happenning to it. Could this be a design flaw? What should I do about this?

PS: I searched the forums for this problem and found a hundred stories about people getting hit by the pizza delivery guy, but nothing that specifically addresses this.

 

Never really noticed...have to look tomorrow morning.

 

Its not a design flaw, i can tell you that. My doors work perfect. Things like these nomally occur when the car has been hit by something (for example the pizza guy) and it has been repaired badly and the door is mounted incorrectly.

It could also be your hinges that are rusted or it could also be a loose bolt.

The cure for this problem can be a little bit tricky. You will have to realign the door so it doesn`t hit the panel. One thing you should have a look at is the other door. Measure the gap from the door to the panel and then have a look at the door with the problem. They shold be the same, if not, you will have to break out the trusty old screwdriver and start aligning!

 

Are you talking about the rear of the door, or the front of the door?

Rear of the door: You need to "remount" the door. It can be as easy as loosening the 6 bolts and picking up on the back of the door, or it can require modification of the hinges (I've never had to do this, yet). It would go more smoothly if you had somebody who could pick up on the door while you're tightening the bolts, but it can be done alone.

Front of the door: You need to "remount" the fender. I've never seen this happen where it didn't crease the fender, so hopefully you didn't force it (if this is your problem). You'll need to take the back fender bolts loose, bring the fender out as far as it will go, and tighten the bolts back down. You'll want to fix the fender before you do this, since moving it out won't necessarily keep the door out of the fender once you bring the fender out. You will probably need to slot the holes, but maybe not. I've gone about 50/50 with this problem, and of course "someone" may have "at some point" done this to one of my racecars to get more fender flare.

 

Try loosening the bolts that hold the guard (fender) on and pulling it out a bit then retighten. Thats how i fixed mine.

 

Took another look at it, and it may be a messier problem than I feared.

It's the front fender.

Looks like the flange that hooked on to bolt rusted away, and the previous owner just put a couple of steel screws through what was left to keep it on.

I'm wondering what you guys think about getting a new flange and simply epoxy it on to the fender and then reattach it to the bolt. Do I have to get it welded, or will the epoxy hold?

I'd much rather do this myself, for fun but also $$$