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Painting my car finally and need the proper gap for the headlight doors. I have used a paint paddle to give me clearance on the doors and hood. Paint paddle gap looks to be too large for the headlights as it would require me to enlarge the headlight opening to remove the factory finished edge hem. It is bare fiberglass so the gap needs to be large enough to accommodate primer, color and clear. Any help would be great.
Gee Dean, perhaps some photos of what your up against. On my car I went absolutely insane trying to just get my headlight doors even all the way around. Can't tell you how many hours I spent driving myself insane. Those doors are a Absolute bugger.
My advice, get those gaps as even as you can all the way around. And accept the fact that you will NEVER get them perfect. And the sooner you accept that, the more likely you will retain some of your sanity.
And believe me, they can be very tight and not hit, chip the paint. They only hit when they hit!
The smallest gap is still a gap!
OK Dean, in the spirit of trying to be helpful.
This was me making it worse trying to get it perfect.
Giant Ouch! WOW! Did that hurt. Just trying to get it more perfect, and it really wasn't all that bad before. Just wasn't perfect. Perfect may be very.hard to achieve! This ouch cost me over 4 thousand dollars! I am a working man! This REALLY hurt!
THIS, this I settled for.
Just look at the refection in that single stage paint! No clear on this car! Same headlight door. 4 grand and the rest later. See, the gaps are STILL NOT PERFECT!
How perfect do you want them? How much time and money do you have?
How wide is your paint paddle? How tight is my upper gap? No, it's not hitting anywhere.
It's called, split the difference all around the best you can.
Spectators really don't notice!
This is what the AIM indicates for the gaps. Getting that measurement is probably going to be very difficult if not impossible. Be careful.
Years ago when they were still producing the C4 in Bowling Green several of us took a trip to BG and went through the factory.
We watched the guys on the line put in the rotating headlight assemblies that the C4 had. They cheated on the assembly line and someone had made a plastic or nylon assembly that went into the headlight hole from the outside and then they placed the assembly into the hole from underneath and it fit so well that they did not have to make any measurements, just fit it into the form, tighten the bolts and remove the plastic assembly from the outside. 15 seconds tops. One of my friends had a Corvette garage and said doing that to a customer's car was a nightmare since you didn't want to damage the paint. All he needed was the plastic form.
been doing mine.
problem is I have to remove whole assembly to make adjustments
there is just no room to loose/tight some adjusters.
I have it close but needs, to me, another slight adjust.
1972 Headlight door gaps?
