Door Repair

I've been out of commission for a couple of years and the Hot Rod has just had to sit.  I had an ankle injury that I thought was just a sprain so I toughed it out and after a year saw a doctor.  The result was surgery where they performed a ligament transplant from a cadaver donor (thank you unknown person) because I had torn a ligament, walked on it for a year and ground it away.  A 1/2 inch bone spur had grown in it's place, which was removed.  I had just recovered when I tore the meniscus in my knee which required surgery and rehab but I'm back at it.

I was pretty excited until I stripped the doors.

The problem of the unique body of the Lemans once again reared its ugly head.  Some body parts aren't readily available or even available at all, because most people restoring a Lemans will swap a few body parts and make a GTO out of it.  I'm not going that route so it means repair instead of replace.

Rust inside and out.  Story of my life with this project.  This bottom front corner of the driver side door was all but gone.  I immediately patched the top you see in the picture to maintain structural shape.  Then continued stripping.

Lots of tiny patches and fill but it's solid.

Rust along the bottom edge.

Patched and repaired

The passenger side door was worse

Matching the beauty lines took a few tries

But I eventually got it

Covered all the repairs with a short strand fiberglass body filler that will seal any pinholes so moisture doesn't get behind my body filler.  Ready to start the body work.