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Page 20 |
Sliding door repair. |
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Firstly I would like to point
out my very good helper, Greg, who works at a triumph restoration Center in Ditchingham. I asked Greg do the sliding door as I know his welding
skills are better than mine, and with such a large panel the welding
needed to be right. the sliding door had been dropped, maybe it had fallen off its runners - you can see the damage at this end of the picture. Also it was very rusty and the whole bottom needed replacing. We had repair panels for the skin and inside so Greg marked out a line and carefully cut along with an angle grinder, he also cut through the lips around the edges. However, Greg is pointing out one of four spot welds which needed to be removed before the panel would come off. |
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Once the skin had been removed the damaged section was straightened out and only a small section needed to be repaired. You can see the area that was repaired in the picture below. |
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The repair panel for the skin was cut down to the right size and a step made in the top edge. neither Greg or I were happy with the curve on the panel - it was too flat - so I devised a method of bending it to a better radius at the bottom. the method I used was a piece of 2 inch thick walled pipe with a cut down the middle and a length of 2 inch heavy angle iron, the bottom lip of the panel was placed in the cut of the pipe and then the angle was put on the outside and the whole lot carefully placed in the vice with 2 G-clamps to hold the ends together. We carefully bent the panel testing it in the door frame until we were happy. |
| Greg then spotted the new
panel very carefully along its length. You can see him checking how
straight it is before properly welding it in place. Greg spotted quite a few dents in the panel above and with his skillful welding tried to pull the dents out using heat from the welds. |
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| After all the welding was done there was a lot of filling to be done. The piece of angle iron you see was useful for checking the highs and lows across the panel. |
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| And after a lot of filling
and spray putty (the yellow) we hung the door to see its fit.
It took some time to get the door to fit as there are lots of adjustments in all the mounts and rollers but we got it lined up eventually. |
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Please feel free to e-mail me with suggestions or questions and I will try and oblige. |
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