It seems like a long time since I last got into the garage.  I felt a little unnerved by the doors fitting the aperture so badly that I wanted the reassurance of seeing a complete car to see how they are supposed to line up.  So I put a question on the Austin Healey owners club forum and was offered a couple of avenues to explore including the logical route of contacting the AHC 100 register which is what I did.  John Harper runs the register and, by sheer good luck, lives not too far away from me.  John informed me that there are no 100s being restored by private individuals near me so kindly invited me over to look at his complete 100.  John’s cars are beautiful and it was really inspiring to see what I am going to end up with, I’m a lucky man.

The complete car enabled me to see that the door sits a little proud of the inner wings as the trims take a reasonable amount of space.  I also realised that my rear inner wing is too long, by about 3cm.  This answered a few niggling questions that I had and so flush with confidence and desire to turn my metal into a car I headed back into the garage.  I mounted the wings on and then fitted the hinges (another thing I learnt) on top of them then I started on the near side door.  I don’t have any holes in the door frame so needed to paint the hinges and then hold the doors against them in what I thought was the correct position to get marks on the door where the hinges should be.  Once done I drilled some holes and cleaned up the burrs and then bolted the door to the car.  The front lines up pretty well although it was slightly too low but the back was miles out, maybe 2cm too high.  So off with the wing and out with the grinder to remove some of my welds to get the bottom section of the ‘a’ post removed so that I could move it backwards (with the aid of a small hammer).  I got it closer but decided that I was too cold so returned home to the fire and dog whilst feeling somewhat contented.