Waiting for a few bits to finish the cockpit area ..so thought I would tackle the door work required ...
I welded a piece of flat strip to the edge of the door hinges to stiffen them up and painted the door frames with POR 15 , rehung them using the aluminium bushes and new hinge pin bolts secured with nylocs . I then braced the front corners of the door jamb onto the space frame with 2 home made brackets . This really made the body rigid and took the flex out of it ...a small bracing bracket on the top of the hinge pivot attached to the body reduced the flex there as well ... finally , I tied the top hinge to the bottom hinge using 8mm button head bolts inside some aluminium tube to stiffen them up too .....
I had a real fight with Grahams doors in his build , trying to make a good solution ... the modified door skins , lighter frames and extra bracing ensures these are now much easier to deal with ...
I cut down the dovetails to fit between latch and door skin and fitted them using a steel 3mm spacer plate ...
finally the door skins were sanded to fit .. a few mm off the back edge to get the frame snug , trial fitted , marked along the frames , removed , sanded where the frame touches and then bonded into place with several clamps to ensure they don't move ....
