[NOT A TA]

2nd gen F body doors are long and heavy. Worn out hinge bushings and pins are common now that they're 35-45 years old. Mine were in good condition still because it was a low mileage car (42,000) when I got it and painted it the first time. Even now at 45 YO only the drivers side hinges showed slight wear when lifting up on the rear of the door. However I figured now's the time to replace them so there's no need to do it once painted and take a risk of scratching/chipping something. The original lower hinge bushings are plastic (really GM?) so no telling when they might split and fall out. Might be the day after paint. I'm sure there's a ton of How To's on hinge repair around the web so I'll skip the instructional rhetoric and just show a couple pics some might gain tips from.









With the hinges replaced it was time to get the doors on and aligned. I was then reminded of the door gap anomaly on the drivers side of almost every early 2nd gen Firebird I've seen. It appears that the door skin wasn't shaped quite right to the fender curve above the door handle part. Welding a piece of rod to the edge of the door and filing/smoothing to create the curve didn't seem like a good use of time to me so I used a little filler in the rear quarter door jamb to even the gap a bit and then did some filing, sanding, priming, etc. to get the gaps on both doors good enough for me on this car. Are they perfect? No, but they're acceptable to me and probably better overall than when the car was new. After final priming/blocking they will be a little better than you see in the pics below.

Yes, I know the horizontal body line is off in the pics below. Previous blocking was done with the door just roughly in place with the old hinge bushings. It'll be straight after some more blocking and final priming/blocking.





Since this was an AC car and I've removed the HVAC the vacuum operated fresh air air duct on the passengers kick panel is no longer functional. I will be blocking off the upper cowl where air is supplied to increase downforce so there won't be anything to feed the duct. I'm also trying to recover the 200 lbs. I added with the roll cage so every little bit helps. The vent duct housing/door/vacuum canister assembly probably weighs a couple lbs. more than the aluminum panels I made to seal off the duct opening and it will get seam sealed when installed so I won't get any wind whistles etc. Drivers side duct opening was sealed by the factory with seam sealer to the plastic kick panel and is getting sealed with an aluminum panel also to increase fire protection. I know the aluminum isn't as much of a fire block as steel but risk of fire entering there is low and so I just figured the aluminum would be better than plastic.