Posted by Clint Dixon [172.68.59.174] on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 at 13:24:28 :
In Reply to: Re: door body lines..Okay Clint posted by Kevin in Ohio [173.245.55.160] on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 at 11:10:52 :
Hey Kevin,
You have an early cab and what looks like early doors too. I am not surprised that your parts aligned nicely. It seems the problem increased with time. Not sure if dies were wearing out or if something changed in a die as changes were made to the door, i.e.: change from non-vent window to vent window stamping. And as was said below, it may not even have been a stamping problem, but an alignment problem with the cab assembly fixture. On my '51, one side of the dash is about .750 inches higher than the other. You can clearly see this comparing the dash to the windshield opening. Don't know if they had a locating fixture for the dash, or just hold it in place by eye and burn it in.
I do believe Budd made both the doors and the cab. They probably made these by the thousands at a time and probably were not checking them at the Budd facility for fit to each other. Cab runs and door runs may not have coincided anyway. Not sure how many facilities Budd may have had at that time but it is possible that doors were not even stamped in the same facility as cabs.
Or, maybe they outsourced their Finite Element Analysis to India at that time and said, "The heck with it, no one will ever notice but the stockholders will be happy." ;^)
Junior
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