After market door panels experience

[da_bears_da1]

I have been working on replacing my cab floor for a few days including the floor pans, inner and outer rockers and cab corners. I bought after market parts to put in. So far my experience is that there is very little that lines up properly and I am having to modify every aftermarket part to get it to fit properly which is chewing up a lot of time.

Yesterday I put my door back on the check the corner and rocker panel lines. Putting the door back on reminded me how much work I need to do on the doors. I am looking for original doors but most seem to have some level of rust problems. I have looked at the after market door skins and bottom replacement parts but am now very skeptical of how well they would work.

My question is whether anyone has bought aftermarket door skins or bottoms and what was the experience? If its anything like mine with the floors, I may be better off just spending the time on my existing doors and patching the metal where I have to.

[slorio]

Bear:
I have done both. Both of my doors needed new bottoms. I think the aftermarket bottoms work okay. I spliced mine on the bottom. The panel actually has about 6" of metal running up the inside of the door. I thought that would be an unusual place to put the splice. On the skin, I fixed one and reskinned the other. Choice to reskin was due to my original having a bit of dents/bondo. Same issue on the splice. The skin is set up to splice half way between the mirror and the window. Seems awkward to try to splice there. I chose a spot two inches below the top body line. I did an overlap, used a piece of angle across the face while welding to prevent warpage, then bondo'ed the two inches up to the body line to make the seam disappear. It was nice with the reskin to be able to blast and prime the inside to my satisfaction. Repairing the skin doesn't give you as much access to the inner door. Hope this helps. I will attach a couple of pictures that should speak for themselves.
Regards,
Steve
New Orleans

[Lugnutz65]

Of course they make skins that are just for the bottom few inches of the door if that would do the job.

[da_bears_da1]

Thanks for the feedback and pictures! I am glad to hear that you were able to work with the panels. My doors have a lot of filler in them from the previous owner who did not seem to take the time to do anything right.

I like where you seemed the skin, makes a lot of sense.

[BR3W CITY]

If you look at my build, we used aftermarket pieces for the inner door bottom, rockers and parts of the floors. The floors fit good but the inners and rockers required hours of notching, trimming, shrinking and welding to fit up. At one point during mockup, the aftermarket door bottoms made my door stick out over an inch lol.

[62 Barnfind]

I replaced the rt door skin. It was a lot of work like you described and took a long time to complete. I also replaced the bottom inner part of the door but I have no pics of it to show you. I measured and measured to cut it perfect and make sure it came out right. When I was done it came out good not perfect. I still had to tweek the door to get it to look good and fit right as you can see in the primer pics. I didn't really like the fit so I tried to look for another door. All I found was rusted door worse than my repaired door. So I decided to keep my repaired door. I think the repair panels were good and I would use them again if I had to. If you can't find a good replacement door I would say repair it. The panels work good!

[da_bears_da1]

Thanks for the feedback and pics. I will follow the advice of trying to get new doors first and skin replace,ent as the second option.
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[ChevyJr]

I have the same issue. Skinned both doors and they look great, but the door lines don't match. I have two extra cab pieces that can be welded on and persuaded to match the doors, I post pictures tomorrow. This seem to be a common issue with the door skins. The gauge of the metal is crazy thick which is great, but Is this something a skilled body man can fix? Or has anyone had anyone do the body work?

I mean I guess I am trying to decide if the 220 in door skins and 20 hours is worth keeping the newly skinned doors or look for "unrusted" doors, which I'm not sure exist for any decent price point.

62 Barnfind what did you do? Just keep them regardless of the line?