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The doors had rust bubbles along the
bottoms.This seems to be a common problem,the sealing arrangement around
the windows is rather poor and lets water in to rust out the door
bottoms.
A bit of squeezing with the fingers and
parts of the doorbottoms started to crumble away to
nothing.
Force of habit seemed to be have been
keeping the
bottom of the door skins in place for some
time. |
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The doors are easy enough to take off,two
bolts
four nuts and a handfull of
screws.
Turning them upside down revealed more
horrors.This was the drivers
side,some sort of sealer
had been plastered along the bottom over
the
rust sealing it in and making the situation
worse. |
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The passengers side had fared (taxi -fared
get it?) no better,both the bottom of the door .and skin had rotted
through.The windows on taxi front passenger doors are electric,the rest
slide up and down on coiled springs inside the doors. |
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This is part of the way through repairing
the drivers
door with a piece of new steel tacked in
position.
The steel had a flange on the outside edge
about
3/4 inch deep.This was tucked under the
outside skin which was carefully peeled back.
One door ended up with slight distortion at
the
bottom which filler covered,the other was
OK. |
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Taking off the stainless steel covers
revealed what was probably the reason they'd been fitted in the first
place.The sills which bolt on underneath were as rotten as a pear
throughout the whole length of the car.In the event of a side impact
this must weaken the taxi considerably.Bolt on panels might ease repairs
in some ways but when the captive nuts break lose of bolt heads twist
off it's sometimes as easy to drill through or grind off welds.Quoted
over £100 plus VAT per side for what is after all only a bit of bent tin
I'm making my own. |
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