Wondering about how many of you have purchased replacement doors for a project vehicle and how well they fit. Friend was telling me about someone who bought replacement doors for a 55-59 Chevy pickup and said they fit so badly he repaired the original doors instead. What kind of experiences have you had and who made the parts?
I'm guessing it depends on how picky you are. A lot complain about it, but my aftermarket doors fit nice on wife's car. Some people would never be happy with anything.
No doors but I bought an aftermarket hood and front fender for my OT 92 Silverado. Hood fit perfectly. Fender had to slot a couple of the mounting holes about 1/8 inch to get back edge to align with door. No big deal though. FWIW, hood was $90 vs $550 for OE. Fender $70 vs $460 for OE.
I've seen this a few times. A now-passed friend insisted on buying new aftermarket doors for his '68 Chevy truck, the guy doing the bodywork told me they required more work than repairing the relatively minor rust in the originals would have. Another guy was happy to get the cast-offs, he fixed and used those. More than a few bodymen have told me they much prefer OEM parts because of fit issues as it's a real crapshoot with aftermarket parts. Some are good, some aren't. The eye-opener for me was one of those TV shows where they built an all-new-aftermarket Camaro convertible and after assembling/fitting the complete body, they literally skim-coated the entire car with bondo. What blew me away was they coated over all of the seams/openings (hood, doors, trunklid, every seam!) then after block sanding the whole car, went back and cut all the seams/openings with a cut-off wheel! I had a hard time believing what I was seeing...
original parts are always the best. never buy a patch panel if you are not doing the work yourself. they will spend 50 bucks on some patch panel when all the repair requires is some flat sheet.
You can buy a complete aftermarket body shell and then spend hundreds of hours fixing the panel fit. Aftermarket parts are not made on precision press tools. But on the flip side, cars that are 60+ years old may have had panel repair work in their history so may not be 100% true so will need a few tweeks to get everything in shape.
I've put them on in the past for others and the ones they bought did indeed suck. One thing people must remember is that on an old car things might have been adjusted, damaged or just plain moved, so even an NOS body panel might not be a direct bolt on with perfect gaps. That being said the panels I've had my hands are we thinner, oil canny and had sloppy body lines. That's why I go with good used 95% of the time and old replacement the other 5% .
On my son's 56 truck we purchased all new bed components from LMC. Everything fit perfectly.........till I tried to bolt the passenger side step plate to the bed. Not even close to fitting. It would require making a V shaped cut in it to narrow it in order for it to fit. Not cosmetic, but just to bolt it in place. I figured LMC would have good stuff. I called them and sent them pictures of the part and the problem. A few months later a redesigned part arrived and it now fit well. So it wasn't a matter of being picky, it just did not fit without a large angular misalignment gap or cutting and welding it. When my friend mentioned the door problem his friend had, I wondered about replacement doors as they are quite a bit more complex.......and I'm working on ....and cussing my son's original doors. I also bought new doors for a 49 truck project but they are still in the box while that project is on hold....so don't know what to expect.
I'd be leery of new doors for the 55-59 trucks....but it's also not easy to find good used ones. And the fit of original doors, in an original cab, that hasn't ever been wrecked or anything, is iffy also! Plus the problems with the hinge nuts in the lower part of the door cracking, the fit of the windshield area on the pass side (they're all too high), whatever you do, it's gonna take a lot of work. good luck
My dad bought his ‘57 new. I recall him saying the fitment wasn’t nearly as good as the earlier trucks were.
Must have been earlier than 47/53 then. I've gone though a lot of early sheet metal that was in pretty nice looking shape that didn't fit right until I found a piece that did. With AD trucks and probably TF trucks it may be what assembly plant they were produced in and how old the dies were when they stamped the part. The best fitting hood I ever had on my 48 was a 54 hood that I bought at an auction. No curled lip snarl on the drivers side between the hood like you see on all too many 47/53 trucks. As far as the aftermarket parts go you don't know how good the original parts that they used to make the dies off were in the first place. I was looking at one of the 5 window 55/57 cabs in a Premier street rods add to day thinking that the one truck I alway wanted was a 56 big window short box. This thread got me to wondering how many hours one would have tied up in one of their cabs making it perfect. My vote as for Chevy AD or TF sheetmetal, Pay a premium for really nice original pieces and be done with it.
That's one thing I learned early in auto repair, the customer always thinks that the body seams were perfect, within .010 EVERYWHERE on the car when they bought it new. Had 1 customer come in yrs ago after straightening the frame on his ford truck. It was just over a 1/16" difference from side to side. After hearing him complain for 20 minutes my boss tells me to throw him a tape measure, they leave, 40 minutes later they're back and the guy quietly leaves. I ask what happened, my boss said " I put the tape in his hand, dropped him off in the middle of the ford dealership and told him- find me one that fits better and I'll match it". "After about 20 trucks he gave up and said I guess it's close enough". My boss said the closet they found was just over 1/8" all the way to 1/4" between the cab and bed. But yeah I've heard that same complaint over and over. Fact is oem didn't sit down with a 1/8" gap tool and fit every panel. People see custom shops doing that on t.v. and think all cars come that way..... ..
You can tell how good they're gonna fit by the price. I do a lot of C10's in my shop, and I always use Key parts doors on them. GM licensed restoration parts. But I don't think they go back that far. I've always had better luck just repairing what I had on the older stuff. But if you want Mike, I can check my guy on those doors, he's in Berea. You can get them at my cost if he can get them.
A friend of mine bought new doors and fenders for his 58 a couple years ago and bought what they thought were the best they could get...and wished he would have just used the originals by the time they finished making the aftermarket ones fit. I have never even tried using aftermarket sheet metal other than patch panels on old stuff. But, I can typically find decent old stuff around too.
Some of those TV shows were doing that for every car they built, whether the panels were aftermarket or original, but that's a topic for another discussion.
That's the problem. People just think t.v. shows. I drive my cars. I try to have shiny paint on some of them. I don't care about doors gaps . Not everyone has access to spare parts. I will buy new aftermarket rather than beat on old junk metal. I would rather drive then do bodywork.
Seth Doulton makes a damn near perfect aftermarket door for 55-59 chevy pickups, anyone that has bought them rants and raves on their quality and fitment. https://qualityclassicparts.com/blogs/news/1955-to-1959-doors-for-sale
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