Thread: I couldn't build it for $3 K either!

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After getting the ball rolling on the engine, it was time to get back on the body. As I said earlier in the thread, I'm trying to get the interior unit ready to glue in.

One area that had been nagging at me was the door alignment. I had the hinge area fixed, but the latch side of the body was sprung out at the top. This caused a 1/2" gap at the bottom of the door.

I first thought about tying the left and right sides of the body together with a "bulkhead" piece. I thought I could just line everything up and glass it in. It didn't work out like I wanted. There isn't a lot of room under the seat and I just ran out of room. Plus, it made the interior unit almost impossible to get into the body.

What I finally came up with was an adjustable brace that ran from the door frame down to a bracket on the floor. The bracket is bolted through the floor to the trans crossmember. The long piece in the pics is sandwiched between 2 pieces of wood with bolts and then those pieces are glued and fiberglassed to the door frame. The "brace" is a just a turnbuckle. This gives me the ability to adjust the door alignment in the future. It also makes the body very solid. You can shake the whole car with no flex in the door frame. I'm happy with it now.