I'm having trouble getting my headlight doors to sit right. I have a huge gap between the top of them and the top of the fenders. I see no way to close up this gap and it looks like !@#$ the way they sit now. Anyone have any ideas on how to correct this?
I've seen a lot worse but: Could be an issue of loose support brackets directly behind them. The best starting point is to replace the plastic/nylon posts the fastening screws turn into. Made a huge difference for my car. No wiggle & they sit much better. Not sure where I got them but someone here will have a source.
The plastic mounts are original, but they're still very tight. The doors don't wiggle at all. I know there's some movement I could get out of them by holding the doors up higher while tightening the screws, but then the headlights wouldn't be centered in the openings. :af: Thanks for the suggestion though. I may just go ahead and get some new ones from CARS and see what happens. What I think needs to happen is that the fronts of the fenders needs to come down a little, but I can't see how I can make that happen.
That was going to be my next suggestion, but honestly, trying to avoid it. The alignment of the front end sheetmetal can be a fickle issue. The bezels mount to the rad. support, so do the front end of the fenders. Gotta remember to get the best you can with what you have. These cars were built for a price, back in the day, by no means are they perfect. Someone here posted a link to Camaro assy. plant, late '60's. Couldn't find it again if I tried. Fender/hood alignments were give & take. "Hold upper rear edge of fender to Mark"A". Fill gap "B" with as many shims as necessary.
Not compared to most cars I can find on the net and this site. Granted, I see some that are that bad, and some even worse, but I'd still like to close them up if I can. The best I've seen are on Tim car in this pic.
I would adjust (lower) the hood a bit on the right side. Also, your bumper is a bit low, especially in the front. It also is adjustable. Try different lighting, it's kinda hard to see in that pic, but thats what I see.
Nothing has it's final alignment yet. Except the grill, as it has no adjustment. It may not look like it. but the tops of the fenders and the top of the hood are all perfectly level right now. I'll bring the bumper up when I get the headlight doors in their final position.
Could it be that the top piece of the core support was factory welded a little high? If that piece were lower on the core, wouldnt that solve the gap problem? Is that core support an NOS variety from the 80's?
I had a similar issue on my SunCoupe when I put it back together. But only on the passenger side. I couldn't figure out how to adjust it, so I went and looked at buddy's '72 GS which he is the original owner of and his gap was just like mine, wider on the passenger side. I checked the photos of my car before the restoration and sure enough the gap was the same. I always look at that on 72s and have seen many,many of them with a wider gap than 70s and 71s and wider on the passenger side. Don't know why.
Gaps look normal to me too. My '71 has 3/8" gap between top of headlight bezel and bottom of fender lip. It's even on both sides. The pic of Tim's front end is from a higher angle than your pic looking straight in so it gives the illusion of less gap.
Yeah, I went back and looked at my "before" photos too, and apparently my car had these large gaps too from the start. Frankly I don't care if it's "normal" or not, I still want to close it up a bit. While the pic of Tim's car is taken from a little higher angle, you can still see he has far less gap than what appears to be "factory normal" for these cars. I'm going to see what I can do by elongating the fender-to-core support holes a bit, and see if that will let me slide the fenders down. All I want is about 1/4"! uzzled: Thanks for all the help/ideas guys!
I tried doing alignment myself and I gave up, its a very tidious task to undertake, especially if you aren't working with all Nos parts. I did a patch panel on my inner fender and core support so I am just ignoring the misalignment until I purchase a new core support and inner fenders:dollar: If you figure out a solution please keep us posted!
Dean , Tight gaps on the h/l doors are a challenge . The orange vert pic is tough to see the gaps because of the angle of the pic . In the pic you can see the Back seat .In the pic of your car You are not able to see the back seat . This will affect the appearance of the gap . Here are a couple of tweaks you can use to tighten the gaps . - Move the hood down ,by moving the latch down starting with the latch supt brackt . maybe move the core supt lower tiebar down first . then shim the latch supt down from the core supt .This will help with the gaps then move the hood bumpers up to align to fenders . - the fenders must be all of the way down and in on the core supt . every bolt hole must be adjusted that way . 1 or 2 millimeters will help at every a adjustment you make. - the H/L doors have no real adjustment built into them . So you must make some . There are several ways . You must move the H/L door IN (towards the firewall ) at the top and OUT at the bottom . Or you can move the inner lower corner outwards . This will tip the door and close up the gap at the rounded corner by the fender . Here are a couple of ways to creat adjustment .Shorten the plastic nuts . remove 1 to 3 mills . Shim the H/L door by adding a washer or two between the door and the plastic nut . You can move the metal of the core supt in or out with a tap of a block of wood. It is a hundred small increments of adjustments that addup . Tipping the door will make the appearance of tighter or larger gaps . Take the door and install it withonly the upper outer screw .then hold it flat on the nuts . then move it out tippinp it at various angles and u will see the what you need to do .Then remove the door and shorten the upper inner plastic nut a couple of mills and try it again with just one screw. I have had success with using these tips .
No wonder my ears were burning... This stuff is way easier to correct before the car is painted, but the last post has a lot of great ideas and most of what I used. I shimmed mine a touch here and there to make the best of the gaps that I could. Test fit on my car before paint was pretty good to start with, the quality control on these cars was crap quite frankly so you have to build your own in if possible. I spent probably 5 or 6 hours aligning these things. The plastic mounts these bezels use do not allow any up and down adjustment, only side to side. the clips and headlights all basically "bolt in" so the alignment is built into the rad support. If you hold them up and tighten as you say, it will close the gap a bit just by stacking the slop one way. Luckily in 72 with the blacked out bezels the headlights not centered issue is not as noticeable as the other years. If you are not happy with the way it is now, and with the car painted already, the first thing to do would be to loosen the five bolts that hold the fender to the rad support (three on front and two on inside edge) and see if you can make any gains there (don't forget more than pushing down on fenders which are already bolted solid to firewall and structure you are trying to move the rad support up so loosen off the rad support/frame mounts too). If not, you could file out the holes a bit on the rad support and fender as needed, to allow moving rad support up higher on the fender (ie so it moves the headlights, grille and bezels higher in relation to the fender as well) but in order to keep your fender/door alignment happy and not stress things out, you will need to stuff shim the rad support mount as well. Don't go crazy, and make sure to touch up the areas so they don't corrode. Also, there is a recess on the fender where the rad support bolts on and if you go too far you will hit the edges of that (not good). I would avoid doing this if at all possible. Hood of course is easy, just lower the bumpers, latch will adjust (in fact, I would leave the hood up and not worry about it until last if you already have it square). NOS fenders often have these gaps as they weren't welded together properly as the jigs wore out, with the outer skin higher on the inner structure. Learned that the hard way on my 71. I've attached a close up to make you feel better. You can see mine don't fit perfect either (only for a fellow Buick guy tormenting himself would I post this!), its not quite square in the opening but that was the best balance for my car. Side to side line up the bezel chrome to hood chrome, a mismatch there is much more noticeable than on the outer bezel to fender gap. The other thing to remember is that you are staring at this driving yourself nuts and worrying about perfection when the average guy on the street is clueless anyway and won't notice...plus at a show (if you care), people are standing and looking down towards the car so it won't be so obvious. Can't share entire photo at this time as it is huge and I have plans for it It kinda looks bad too as board downsizes, fire me an e-mail and I can send you full rez pic. Hope that helps. Don't drive yourself insane.:beers2:
