Having repaired the door body and the window frames, I have now started to look at the latches and door handles. After a certain amount of swearing, I have found that the most convenient way to re assemble the doors, is to start with the door handles.
The handles come from a Standard 8/10. My handles were both pretty much shot, so having spent some time looking for replacements, with no luck, I eventually went for new reproductions. They seem to be of quite good quality, and the guy I bought them off was able to fit a new lock for the driver's door too.
The door handle requires a small pusher, to operate the lever that frees the latch mechanism. I had to make up a new one as the old on was too badly damaged.
Next I fitted the latch. The latch mechanism itself is from a Ford Consul/Zodiac or Zephyr. I found some spares from a mark II that look identical to my originals. I think they are from the rear doors.
Theres a lot of damage to the door shells around the fixings for the lock mechanism It looks like it is due to attempts at adjustment of the door fit, or perhaps the fixings pulling through. In any case, I have filled the holes in and re drilled. I plan to make adjustments to the door fit using the striker plates if possible.
Attaching the latch mechanism to the door was a bit of a challenge. The original fixings I got with the car were a selection of odd bolts, which goes some way to explain the state of the glass fibre. What I had hoped to do was to use new low profile screws and washers to spread the load and protect the fibreglass, however, the threads in the latch seem to be 7/32 BSW, a really obscure thread that is not readily available. There isn't room in the metal to drill out and re tap, so, for the time being I have used the machine screws that came with the spare set of latches. I used a set of solid countersunk washers, to spread the load, but I am concerned that these will be too proud of the surface, and interfere with the closure. Well see later on.
The small screw in the picture above holds the rear of the door handle to the door. This looks like it will be a problem later so I will need to find some way of spreading the loading on the door skin at this point, to stop cracking.
After the handle and latches go in, the window frames and bracketry can be fitted. This is another knuckle scraping process, but I found if you reassemble it in this order, you get least cross!:
Attach the Aluminium Trim cross piece to the frame.
Fit the glass to the frame,
Insert the frame into the door
Attach the glass frame runners to one side of the bracket. You can do this easiest if you raise the frame a little and access the captive bolts through the cut-outs in the door back. You can get at the front one though the cut out for the door-opening catch mechanism.
Slide the winder mechanism into the door and fit the arm into the window glass channel.
Now jiggle the winder mechanism spigot out through the hole and screw it in place.
Attach the second bracket to the first
Bolt the brackets to the door
Now screw down the aluminium trim piece to the top of the door.
Wind up the window fully
Fit door catch mechanism. It needs to be separated from the door skin by a spacer, a bolt does the job
and that's it! Mechanism completely rebuilt! The window winds up and down, the door latch works and everything.
Dead chuffed!
The door body itself still needs a lot of work, but that I will save until I get to the bodywork as I want to be able to match the curves in properly. The shut lines leave a lot to be desired as well. Hopefully I will sort that too.
A couple of final bits to mention: first the striker plates. In the boxes of bits, I only had one striker plate and it looked like this.
A closer look at the photos I got when I bough the car showed that, at the time it was dismantled, it had two, mismatched striker plates. The one above on the drivers side and different one on the passenger side
The driver's side B post has two sets of holes, one vertical pair that matches the striker plate, and another horizontal pair. The passenger side had only the horizontal pair.
It looked very much like the striker plate I had, must have been a later addition, the two additional holes being for the original striker plate. I think the passenger side striker plate was from an earlier version of the Zodiac/Zephyr/Corsair or Consul. In any case, I sent a photo to John at Goldendays parts and he was able to source a pair for me.
So there we are. One door completely rebuilt and correct striker plates sourced.
Lastly I sent the door hinges away to Adrian Venn at Exactly TVR to have them rebuilt. They came back all sorted out, bead blasted and primed, which save a lot of messing about.
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