Reinstalling body, things don't line up... suggestions?

[oz]

Greetings,
I have had my '69 Sportsroof apart from the windshield forward for the last year while I did an engine rebuild, 4 speed toploader swap, and detailing of the engine bay. I am now at the stage where I am reassembling to body. Before I tore the hood, fenders, and cowl panel off I put masking tape across the joints, put a straight pencil mark and then put crosses marking distance - all so I could get the panels back on right.... one other thing to mention - the panel fit before was terrible. Needless to say I am not using the tape marks too much to reassemble.

There are a couple of problems I have. One side of the hood is too low at the hinge end. The inner fender was replaced before and I think they attached it too low. I used new hinges but still had to enlarge the slots and put shims between the hinge and the hood to even get it close.
The second problem is that even though I have a nice 1/4" gap between the fenders and the doors, and the hood is perfectly straight to the cowl and fenders, the one fender sticks out beyond the hood at the front on one side and the other comes up short on the other side.... Honestly, overall the fit is better then before (I always blame the poor fit on the guy that painted it years ago) but I would like to figure out a good way to make the fit better. I put all the fasteners in but did not tighten any of them until I got the fit close - it jsut didn't seem like I could make everything fit at once. I tightened from the rear forward to ensure proper door gap, etc...

After sandblasting the doghouse and painting it and looking at the parts I took off, I think the front of the car may have been hit at one time. The hood latch is stamped with a 1971 date and the inner headlight buckets are not from a Mustang (only year for early Mustang to have 4 lights so there's only one version)... The guy at NPD said they might be from a Fairlane.... I had to straighten the rad support a little also....

Is 'close enough' as good as I can get it or am I missing something?

THANKS!

 

[TOM B]

Getting panels to line up is difficult, as you know. Hoods are the worst on old stangs, you have those heavy duty springs to deal with. you may have to round out some holes if panels were replaced. Take the springs off and get the gaps correct then do the hood with the springs on, that way you know the fenders are right. If you used repo fenders or hood, most of the time there not right, a little off here and there will show up when fitting. when I did my 65 I used a left repo fender with so-called ford original tooling. I had the same problem, all the gaps where correct exept one side in front where the headlight bezel meets the hood was about 1/4 inch longer. looked like crap. After re-doing the gaps again and again I got it to be better but still not right. I had to shorten the fender at the bezel mount by cutting the spot welds and re rolling the panel and weld, worked real good to correct the problem. I also had the frame checked, it was ok, before I done this, remmember these old stangs went through a lot of abuse. The gaps were not perfect from the factory but you want them very close to look good.
Stick with it, walk away when your pi*sed off, you'll get it.
P.S. Not for years like I did.

 

[1320stang]

Well, I'm going to have to put mine back together someday, but you start with the doors and work your way forward as I understand. If you didn't remove your doors, make sure you have nice gaps on the bottom and back of those, plus with the fenders off, this makes it easier to do.

 

[oz]

Yea, the rear and bottom door gaps are acceptable so I have not messed with them. What I am thinking is that I may be able to tweak the fit of the panels by sacraficing the parallel gap between the hood and cowl and shift everything a little one direction (away from the long fender and toward the short one) so they meet at the front. I will measure from one rear corner to the opposite front edge of the fender to see if the whole area is square first... Ideally it will measure off in the direction I need to tweak it...
As mentioned before, I used masking tape and pencil marks on the panels to help with realignment... the only flaws in this is that te panels didn't fit well before and I didn't mark the cowl to the glass... that would have made sense since the cowl is the first thing to go back on... I used the original panel and holes so there isn't a lot of room for error.
I'll measure first and then start tweaking I guess.
THANKS!