Fiberglass Door Installation

SCrazy

SCCoA Member
Over a year ago I purchased a pair of Fiberglass doors from John Temple. I've had them sitting in my basement every since and have finally gotten around to installing them.

I decided to use the factory latch and external door handle but everything else is new. The hinges are pin type that allow for the doors to be lifted off for easy removal, the interior handle is just a simple lever and the windows will be lexan.

When the group purchase for these doors was discussed they were billed as pretty much a bolt on mod, that could not be further from the truth. They are "replica" doors and not just a fiberglass box the way some doors are, and they have aluminum backing plates epoxied into the inside for hinge support and to reinforce the latch area but all the openings and mounting holes need to be cut out, drilled and fitted.

I began by fitting the factory latch. There was an outline of the stock latch location in the fiberglass shell so I had an idea of where they were mounted but in order to be exact I made a template out of masking tape on the stock door and transferred it to the fiberglass so I was exact. The biggest issue with fitting the latch was that the stock door is about 1/16" think and the fiberglass door is more like 1/2" thick. After some back a fourth things worked out ok.

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Next I fit the lever type interior latch handle. Pretty simple lever with a little backing plate and rod and a couple of ball ends.

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I decided to order new exterior handles so I have to wait for those to arrive and moved on to the hinges. The hinges are just simple pins mounted on 3/4" chromoly tubes and plates with a hole in them for the pin that mount on the door.

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The hood, fender and stock hinges needed to be removed. Then in order to install the hinges I mounted the door into the opening and clamped/duct taped it in place making sure the gaps and clearances were as good as I could get them.

I then made a plate out of 1/8" steel that was large enough to cover all of the stock hinge mounting holes so I could use the stock mounting hardware.

Working from the front I mounted the hinges to the end of the doors and the tube/pin I tack welded to the plate I made to bolt the hinges in.

Everything was then removed, final welded and reassembled.

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With the hinges in place I mounted the door and began to make adjustments.

First the door latch pin needed to be extended by about 1/2" due to the latch being further from the jamb because of the thickness of the fiberglass on the door. With that set the door latched OK but because the edges of the door were all at least 1/4" thick the door did not close well with the weather stripping in place, I thinned out the top edge of the door to about 1/8" in order to make it easier to close and it is OK but is really only great with the weather stripping completely removed.

After two 8+ hour days I have one door mounted. The fit is not horrible but at the back end of the door the door is "flat" in the middle and does not match up well with the rear quarter although it aligns well at the top and the bottom.

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Finally the door sags about 3/16" at the latch end when you open it. It is caused by a little bit of play/flex in the hinges. The door closes OK but I'm a little disappointed that thing sags like this. I suppose with the hinges being made of just little pins it is to be expected but I really don't know.
 
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Will the savings of weight offset the weight of the cage

Ken

I think I'll be saving close to 75lbs per door!!! That should more than offset the cage.

Stock doors were 100lbs without speakers, wiring, hinges or door panel....these shells are starting off at 17lbs I'll weigh them again once everything is installed.
 
I think I'll be saving close to 75lbs per door!!! That should more than offset the cage.

Stock doors were 100lbs without speakers, wiring, hinges or door panel....these shells are starting off at 17lbs I'll weigh them again once everything is installed.

I think everyone would be interested in your cars weight when all is said and done

Ken
 
Sounds like a good bit of work, but very significant weight savings!

With the price on those doors, I would have hoped the fit / finish was a bit better too.
 
To make them look "stock" is going to take a ton of work.

When they made the molds the taped over every hole in the stock door shell and made the molds on top of that so at every hole you have the outline of the hole then the tape outline that covered the hole. There will be lots of work to sand, fill and finish all of those areas in addition to whatever it takes to adjust the fit. They are certainly not "ready for paint"
 
Yes I will agree the fiberglass doors was the single biggest pain in the a** project I have ever been a part of with any car project. I would not do this again or recommend it to anyone else. Everything was made for the thinner steel doors, and the glass doors are thicker thus it wasn't a direct easy xfer from steel doors to glass. It like he said required tons of time/work. Then after that is all done there is putting them on and lining up everything. Still have nightmares about it all. Mine also stick out in the same spots yours does.

What other things did you do for weight savings? Sorry if I missed that somewhere. I got 500lbs out of mine total so far wondering if there is any simple things left I may have missed.
 
What other things did you do for weight savings? Sorry if I missed that somewhere. I got 500lbs out of mine total so far wondering if there is any simple things left I may have missed.

There are lots of threads about my various projects but there are not many stones left unturned. Everything from a sold axle rear to gutted dash has been touched. A little bit more every year.
 
No new pics but I now have the second door hung and everything is adjusted as best as I can. I'm into these door for about 40 hours so far and I've not yet installed the lexan or done any finish work.

On the lexan I'm kind of torn about how I want to mount it. I could go with the race car look ie perimeter screws and the lexan flushed out to the surface of the door. Or I could reinstall all of the factory weather strips around the window and mount the lexan inside the weather stripping so that the windows look pretty stock. What do you guys think???

I've never painted fiberglass before so I've got some learning to do. One thing that I'm not sure about is that the entire door is not covered with gel coat. The door is a clamshell, two pieces, inside and outside, that have been epoxied together. All of the edges are raw fiberglass/epoxy. Is an epoxy sealer going to be enough to seal the raw areas or am I going to have to gel coat those areas before I can get started?

Lots of work left to do
 
All you need is a good primer on fiberglass. It's not as crucial to seal as metal is. As long as it has been sanded, the primer sticks. All you need to watch for on the non gel coated areas, is that there aren't any pin holes in the resin. If there are just use some glaze to fill them.
 
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On the lexan I'm kind of torn about how I want to mount it. I could go with the race car look ie perimeter screws and the lexan flushed out to the surface of the door. Or I could reinstall all of the factory weather strips around the window and mount the lexan inside the weather stripping so that the windows look pretty stock. What do you guys think???

My vote is to mount it to the inside, just my $0.02 :)
 
I spent some time last night looking at the factory window trim.

The trim is going to need some work in order to be usable with thickness of the fiberglass doors but I think I'm going to go ahead and install the trim and lexan windows similar to factory. I will still need to add some screws that go through the trim, window and door to hold it all together but in the end it should look very similar to factory.
 
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Two more days on the door, only about 6 hours each day though so about 52 hours to date and I still don't have them painted.

I decided to do a hybrid of my two window mounting schemes. I used the factory door window trim but installed perimeter screws through the trim. When I do the final install I'll paint the heads of the screws black.

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The lexan still has protective film on it so it looks like crap but I think the install will be pretty clean.

I also made up some aluminum inner door panels.

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They don't look to shabby. I'm not sure how I will finish them yet, maybe just some paint or maybe some carbon fiber looking wrap....not a huge priority. You can see the door limit strap at the front of picture that keeps the door from flying open. You can also see all of the holes and blemishes that will need to be filled before paint if I want these things to be pretty.

I also saw a door panel with a trick little recess in it to hold a tire pressure guage...I might add something like that, I thought it was a pretty cool idea.
 
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