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So, for show and tell today, what you are seeing is a sequence of shots of the passenger side of my Monte. The passenger door has been completely skinned out and only the latch and some brackets remain inside the otherwise bare inner door or shell that is still hanging there.
The detail shots show the lower door flange, or what was left of it and the first attempt done many years ago to try and repair it. This exercise was performed on the back driveway in the sun and rain, under a canopy using a Lincoln 225 Wire Feed set up for Flux Core. Being outside with no shop back then, Gas would have been a waste. it worked, sort of, but it is time to try and get it right. This shell, although no beauty, is repairable. And that may happen some quiet summer day sometime whenever. For now, I have another completely renovated inner shell on the body table and waiting to go in. Repair, you say, why not chuck it as a lost cause? Because, up here in the land of the Frozen Chosen, any kind of donor doors are about one step away from Dodo land, extinct that is. New inner and outer skins are available, sort of, but the wait time is hideous and the price per each, ................well, all about a week's pay.............each.
Try explaining that kind of expenditure to a significant other who has been incessantly nagging at you for the better part of a year about household expenses and how she/he wants new furniture and every room in the house repainted, Again, even though the last paint job was just a year ago..........................
What is also shown is what is left of the inner and outer rocker panels. Total junk, they both will have to be cut away from under the A pillar all the way into the lower forward corner of the front of the quarter panel. You can get outer rockers; the inner I had to fabriate from scratch. Been waiting to do this repair for over a decade at this point. The last shot is the lower A pillar. Once the door shell is unbolted and set aside, I may have to cut this apart and do it all over again. I do happen to have a donor pillar, (and wouldn't that be a crazy looking inch worm) that I can dissect for the necessary bends and panels. It is just a mean amount of work to muddle through. There are a few more shots poste over on the thread about the 85 door problems.
Nick