We finished painting the doors near the end of April. The doors were pretty much ready to paint as I had completed the structural repairs some time ago but we media blasted them to get rid of the old primer and expose any issues with loose filler in the areas that I had fixed some minor surface issues. With the doors now re-primed and block sanded we were down to the final sand with the 3M guide dust to show us no matter how good you think a panel looks, the guide coat will tell you otherwise.

With a satisfactory result after that final block sand with guide coat we went ahead with the final paint. We sprayed the inside of the doors with Gravitex for a bit more protection and some sound deadening.

We put most of the effort into the surface below the swage line. I figured that I could put a lot of time into the area around each LTD stud only to have it crack or distort again as soon as a cover was snapped to the stud. I repeated a phrase I used many times in this project - its not a bad thing to have some patina.

As Stuart can confirm I had a lot of anxiety over the fit of the right hand door (my passenger door) in particular as this door would not close when I first purchased the car and it was a problem all through the restoration. The main problem was that the car had been hit hard on the front right corner and everything from the A post forwards had been pushed back a very small amount.

In the end a combination of removing material off the faces of the hinges, shimming the tub and bashing the latch into the end of the door with a big rubber mallet allowed the door to close and the latch to function.

I did have a problem with the door pull cable in that on my initial installation the cable was binding on the door trim pocket. I found that these cable pulls need to be installed with almost no slack so that they operate correctly but are still accessible from inside the pocket.

The new door cards also installed with no issues using stainless cup washers and slotted screws from Macy's Garage.

With the doors completed this TR3A is almost ready for the road. There is still a long list of things that need doing but none of them critical to getting the car registered and getting a Massachusetts inspection sticker. I'm expecting to do that in the next week or so once I get the required forms from the insurance company.