I have a question concerning the repair of my driver's side door.
discovered a coverup that was done fairly poorly and now need to figure out what to do.
I figured my options are
1.- source another door
or
2.- cut and replace/reweld panel
I'd really like to keep this door cause its solid, fits great and is good in every other way. I'm not looking for a concours repair, but i'm afraid that I'll never get the panel to fit/contour correctly.
I have another donor door, but it has a rust thru area at the lower/front/inside...kinda typical
dstar5000 wrote:Door does look otherwise solid. I would palsma all the rust out and then patch it
with a MIG, of course.
Bondo covers a lot of evils when it comes to contours. Use a long board, it will be OK.
So, go ahead and cut it out then patch it with a plate from the other door? -then smooth it out with some filler.
I'm wondering if a larger plate (patch) or smaller would be better.
Don is correct. You're door is repairable and i wouldn't take on the job of trading doors (expense, getting pins out, refitting - crummy jobs!) for what it would take to fix your door.
Cut out ALL the rust. Go back to good metal. Make the cut in a shape you can easily duplicate like a circle or a rectangle/square. Make it at least 1/2" bigger than your repair. I wouldn't bother cutting another door. I'd go to a local metal supplier and buy a piece of 18 gauge steel big enough to make the repair. 18 gauge is thicker than the original metal making for easier welding dragging your torch off the heavier patch piece onto the original metal. But 18 gauge is still quite flexible and formable, so it is pretty easy to make a nice repair panel.
After MIG welding all the way around repair, some grinding to get the repair slightly "low", a little bondo and some sanding will make it look perfect. Not very hard if you've got the stuff to do it.
