Time for some shaving!

Shaved Doors
Finally took some time on a rainy day to get some work done. I started by removing the door handles from both the front and rear doors.

The front was a wee bit harder to pull out than the rear as it had what seemed to be a safety mechanism around the lock cylinder.


Once both of the handles were removed it was time to swap the opening mechanisms.

The one on the top is the rear door handle and the bottom is the front. You can see that the rear door handle uses a metal plate to push down on the rear door opening mechanism. Where as the front handle operates with a rod that is connected to the handle.

This is a better picture of the two different operating mechanisms once they were removed from the handles. The handles themselves are identical, so swapping the mechanisms was fairly easy. Here is the rear door handle with the front handle opening mechanism swap completed.

The actual mounting holes in the doors for the two handles are not the same. I forgot to take pictures. What I had to do was weld a small tab on the existing mounts to extend the surface area. Once welded on I drilled the new mounting holes and it was easy sailing from there.

Now with the front door lock, technically shaved it was on to shaving the rear door handle.

There was a bit more work to do here than there was on the front. Cleaned up the paint around the opening so I would have a good clean weld.

I then proceeded to make a paper template and traced it onto a piece of sheet metal. Cut the shape out and contoured it to the existing body lines.

I took a few trips to the grinding wheel to shave off a little here and a little there until I got it fitting flush with the existing door panel. Once it was sitting pretty it was time to weld it in place.

Now it's time to do the same to the other side.