Replaceing door skins!

johnymd

johnymd

Club Member
Any advice?

I've got 2 sets of doors but none in brilliant condition. I could maybe repair the lower sections of the best 2 or use the new Nissan skins that came with the car to repair the best shells. If I do replace the skins then any advice you can give me before I start will be good.
 
Give them to a panal beater to fit. It is an art and can ruin the door gaps if done wrong. Many hours spent on my apprenticeship learning how to do it properly
 
Hiya

I did the door skins on my 280ZX. Its pretty easy to do, I did watch quite a few UTube vids to get the idea first. Couple of things that worked for me.

1. Take the new skin back to bare metal where it will fold on to the door frame and then coat it in a good zinc rich primer that you can weld through. Coat both the skin and the frame. You can use an adhesive as well. I didn't want to as I wanted to spot weld the fold and use a seam sealer over the joint after and wax the internal door when done.
2. Don't what ever you do use one of those door skinning tools, I guarantee it will fu@@ up the fold. I used a block of wood and a set of metal working hammers, ballpeen and flat were best. Make a fold every 4 or 5 inches, folding the metal slightly before going around the door and only bend the lip a little at a time.
3. Also I brazed the skin in place in two spots just to hold it once it was all lined up before the hammer work.

Other than that its pretty simple and a very enjoyable exercise.

I'm sure others will have additional info/advise but the above worked well for me and it was the first time I did something like that.

Huw
 
If you have full doors skins I would fit them unless the doors only need the lower 2 inch replacing up to the bottom swage
 
I had another look at the doors yesterday and one of them is fine. The other looks good from the front but the bottom of the shell is full of pud. I'll have a dig around and see what it looks like.
 
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