Questions about repairing car door...

doctor Stevil

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Hi. So a few years ago I picked up what I thought was a decent, low mileage (approx 40K at the time), 2001 5Speed Mustang GT vert. At first, I was completely happy with the car but then started noticing little things wrong with it, as you normally do in a used car.

One of which is that the interior door panel, on the drivers side, appears to be sagging but it doesn't 'feel' like a sagging door panel if that makes sense... it's still very solid to the touch. It's not loose or anything. The interior drivers side window weather stripping is sitting about 1.5 to 2 inches lower than the exterior... so you can 'almost' see into the door panel. On the passengers side (and on my old 2001 mustang) these weather strips are pretty much in line with one another.

So I did a little more looking around, and to my surprise, when I looked around the edge of the door, you can clearly see adhesive where it appears that the exterior door skin/sheetmetal was attached to the actual door. So it had obliviously been in an accident at one point and repaired (cheaply).

So looking at everything, the exterior of the door is perfectly matched up with the rest of the cars exterior. The door isn't crooked or anything like that. The gaps between the sheet metal is consistent and looks perfectly normal. And likewise from the inside, the interior doesn't look like it's misaligned at all (with exception to the gap between the weather stripping). If you follow the interior door panel from the dashboard, it meets right where it should... and same with the backside that meets the interior behinds the drivers seat... it all looks completely normal. Mechanically as well, everything works great together. The door opens and shuts perfectly.

So with that all said, what I'm wondering is... does this sound like something that's repairable? Is it possible that the interior door panel, when it was reinstalled, is missing a clip up towards the top that holds it in place? With everything seemingly fitting together correctly (except the weather stripping area), I don't know where the error could be unless the actual frame/subframe is slightly tweaked from whatever accident it was in. This car isn't my DD... it's just a toy that I was planning on doing a beefy turbo build on... but if it's never going to be 'right', I might as well cut my losses and try to find one in better condition.

any ideas? I hope you can understand what I'm saying.... it's not exactly easy to try and describe. I'll post up some pics of it later.
 

SVTstang96

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This sounds interesting lol. I'm sure someone will have an answer once pictures are up, as for now you can remove your door panel if you would like and check for the broken clips. If you have never removed a door panel here is a great how-to video on removing it.

[video=youtube;dvNk5ZncW_8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvNk5ZncW_8[/video]
 

ttocs

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Its not that hard to get one of the hooks/clips not in the slot and still get the panel on. More then likely just taking it off and putting it back on correctly would fix it unless its been rigged.
 
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doctor Stevil

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Thanks for the replies. So I got out to the garage to take a few pics yesterday. Don't mind the dirt/dust, she hasn't been driven in a while. I did take a better look at the interior door panel though and it's rock solid. If I push downward, along the top of the panel, there is absolutely no give. That doesn't mean that a clip isn't missing though I suppose. Just figured it would be obvious if one was missing. If the weather is a little warmer this weekend, I'll try popping it off to see anything obvious stands out. Assuming that a missing clip is the problem and an easy fix... is there a better way to 'fix' the door skin? I don't like the idea of what looks like, gorilla glue, holding it on lol. I'm not a body repair guy so this stuff isn't my forte... but if I manage to find a silver Mustang door at a scrap yard, can I just pull it off an install it on mine? Or will I have alignment issues? I'm guessing at that point I'd be paying a body shop to do it?

But alas... here it is. The first image is the outside of the door. As you can see, everything looks fairly normal.

Photo%20Jan%2016%2C%208%2017%2007%20AM.jpg


Here is the adhesive I was talking about attaching the skin to the actual door.

Photo%20Jan%2016%2C%208%2017%2044%20AM.jpg


This is the inside of the drivers door. You can see the exterior weather stripping tabs behind the glass (sorry for the poor image... didn't realize it was so blurry)

Photo%20Jan%2016%2C%208%2018%2005%20AM.jpg


Heres a better images of it

Photo%20Jan%2016%2C%208%2019%2014%20AM.jpg


and lastly, the passengers side for comparison

Photo%20Jan%2016%2C%208%2018%2028%20AM.jpg
 

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