Slightly bent door. Best way to fix?

[Jason]

Well, I screwed up and managed to smack the lower leading edge of my driver's side door against the bottom of the open garage door. The lower front corner is now bent in a little. The rest of the door looks fine but seems to be twisted a bit so that now when you try to close the door it hits the rear striker. With the striker removed the screws that hold the latch in place hit the body. Is there any reasonable way to fix this short of a new door? I haven't tried adjusting the hinges yet, but it appears things are just far enough off that it won't help.

As for the new door route, I see DMCH has bare doors in stock. Any gotchas I should be aware of in swapping all the hardware over to the new bare door? I've replaced the front door hinge before, so I'm familiar with dealing with the torsion bar.

[David T]

Not only do you notice a part of the door seems bent, once you "tweak" it you break all of the glue seams and possibly some of the welds. The door becomes "floppy" meaning if you grab the lower edge of the door while it is open and shake it, it will move more than the other door. Essentially you broke the door. I do not know of any good way to fix it but it is possible if you take it all apart and try welding it up inside, *maybe* it can be fixed. The person who would know for sure is Chris Nickleson. He is the top expert on all things Stainless Steel on the Delorean. It is a LOT of work removing the door, taking it all apart, putting the new one on and then transferring all of the parts to the new door. Two tips I CAN give you is to make a short piece of cable about 6-8 inches long with a bent S hook on one end and a loop on the other. With it you sit on the door sill, close the door and then hook the cable to the door and put the loop over the anchor pin. Makes working inside a lot easier. Another tip is to cover ALL of the edges inside the door with a strip of duct tape. They are razor sharp and will slice you up and you won't even feel it till you see red stuff all over. Fitting a door to a Delorean is no easy task. Especially on an early car. You may wind up having to adjust the other panels to it to make everything fit and look right. When fitting a door you do NOT adjust it to fit to the other panels. You fit it to the fiberglass tub and windscreen frame. See if anyone has a good used door before calling a vendor. You might just find a good deal. They used to go for $500 for an empty one that needed to just be regrained. If it has a lot of parts in it maybe $1,000. And to that add shipping unless you can pick it up.