From the start, it was clear something pretty fundamental was wrong with JWA 170C's front doors. It was also obvious that some ham-fisted attempts had been made to make them fit. For starters, both door draught seals were the wrong way round; ie with the rubber section that's intended to cushion against the doors facing inwards instead of out. So they rattled. A lot. There was also very obvious fouling when the doors opened and closed, the action felt a lot heavier than it should and as usual in cases like this, they had to be slammed hard shut. And with the seals refitted correctly they were even harder to close!
As we saw last month, initial inspection suggested that both door apertures were out. The doors themselves had also been repaired poorly, but had rusted through and needed doing again, this time properly. In cases like this, the correct approach is to get back to basics and start from a pair of doors that are dimensionally correct. Our original doors were clearly beyond sensible saving, so we pulled a pair of better door shells from our restoration specialist Ian Allen's stock. Though solid Minor doors just don't exist as spare parts, salvageable shells with the typical rot along the bottom (for whichavailable) are ten-a-penny. ‘The value of secondhand Minor doors is in the frame and internal bits,’ as Ian put it.
