Restoring the doors on this Series 1 E-Type FHC

As things wound down on the shell, we couldn’t put off restoring the doors any longer. We did alot of doors earlier this year, and I needed a break, so I put these off until late in this restoration. Eventually, it had to be done.

These doors needed new skins – like nearly every door we see, but surprisingly, the inner shells did NOT need new metal in the bottom. The problem they did have was some bad rust in the upper section, in and around the drip trays. We removed the drip trays as usual, but then had to get fancy with some repairs in the top section.

Things were getting fast and furious at this stage of the restoration, so there aren’t alot of photos of the door work. Here is what we did manage to capture.

: The other reason I started these doors and then got away from them was that I couldn’t figure out how to make a one-piece patch for this reverse curve. Here is what I eventually came up with.

: You wouldn’t believe how long it took to figure out what shape these pieces needed to be!

: I was pretty happy with how this turned out in the end.

: For the driver’s door, we used an NOS door panel from our stock that fit the shell almost perfectly.

: Here are the restored shells ready to accept the new skins. The shells have been blasted bare inside and out and coated heavily internally with red oxide. The skins have been hit with self-etching primer before being attached to the shells.

: Here is that same area after some sanding down of the welds. The remainder of the beads here will be covered up by the drip tray, and this door will look factory fresh when painted. This shot also shows the red oxide applied to this area before the drip trays are brazed back on.

: We had to make a few adjustments to the door edges – this is a very time-consuming and tedious task – there is NO room for error here once the door is skinned.