Weird door alignment issue.

[shanebo]

Here's one Ive never seen but.... My passenger door has about a 1/4 inch gap between the pillar and the the weather strip. you can see daylight right through it....and man does it leak!  Its almost like the window frame is too short from end to end. the gap between the pillar on the passanger side is almost twice what is is on the drivers, yet the gap between the windshield pillar is near perfect...also on the top of the window frame the gap in the front is perfect and towards the rear it is much closer to the roof....The car has been wrecked in the past and I'm starting to think they may have used a coupe or kammback door which had a sightly different angle to frame than that of the sx4.

[carnuck]

I've had to bend the upper frames inward to stop leaks on many cars. Just do so gently with the glass rolled down!

[shanebo]

I just gotta figure out how to bring the it back a bit so it atleast makes contact with the pillar. I may have to get creative...I haven't been in any heavy rain yet but I have an image in my head of niagra falls....I'd probably stay drier on my motorcycle. 

[priya]

Here's one Ive never seen but.... My passenger door has about a 1/4 inch gap between the pillar and the the weather strip. you can see daylight right through it....and man does it leak!  Its almost like the window frame is too short from end to end. the gap between the pillar on the passanger side is almost twice what is is on the drivers, yet the gap between the windshield pillar is near perfect...also on the top of the window frame the gap in the front is perfect and towards the rear it is much closer to the roof....The car has been wrecked in the past and I'm starting to think they may have used a coupe or kammback door which had a sightly different angle to frame than that of the sx4.

If I understand you correctly your gap is between the B pillar and the rear part of the door window frame.  I had similar trouble on my driver's door on my SX/4 except the gap was between the roof and the front part of the door window frame.  I had replaced the door but the replacement definitely came from an SX/4.  We tried a 2 door coupe door but it was the top edge of the window frame didn't line up with the roof line so I doubt you have a coupe door on your SX/4.  I couldn't figure out what the problem was on mine, it was like the front edge of the window frame was placed too far down in the door and welded there.  We pushed, pulled, proded the front of the window frame upwards and it helped a bit but the gap was still there.  Finally we readjusted the door and moved the front edge as far forward and upward as we could which also necessitated raising the rear edge of the front fender for clearance.  That got the gap closed enough to seal but I'm still not real happy with it.  I know my car was hit on the driver's side so I wondered if that was the problem but the original door I removed fit well so my guess is that the tolerances were just loose enough that sometimes the doors fit poorly in the opening.

[BenM]

Car lines used to (I don't know if they still do or not) employ a couple of guys at the end of the assembly line that would have some heavy tools and straps to do final alignment of doors and such by bending and hitting parts.

Even going down the line the heat of welding and being stored in places for varying lengths of time would cause things to be a little bit different on every car.

[shanebo]

It does make sense. Car manufacturers, especially back then, didnt have the surgical precision the cars do now. My grandfather who worked for Hudson and later AMC in the 50's in 60's said they used to beat the heck out of parts to force them to fit in alot of cars.

The gap is between the b-pillar. What blows my mind is the gap between the rocker panel, the fender and the A-pillar  appear to be perfect. I know the car has been in a wreck judging by a replaced rocker and a bit of red paint peeking through the grey on the back or the fender...I cant tell for sure if the door was replaced or repaired but something, Im just not sure what, is tweeked...praying its not a body panel  This may require a bit of ghetto engineering.

[El Matador]

I have this problem on my 1980 Concord, in a big way.  It's the worst door fitment I've ever seen on any car.  It's not just the way the window frames align in between the roof pillars, it's also the panel gaps.

The driver side is marginal, the passenger side is horrible.  It's a four door, and the gap between the doors on the passenger side is literally half an inch.  There's no room for adjustment, since that would move the window frames way out of alignment.

The car has never been in a collision as far as I can tell.  It just seems that these particular doors weren't manufactured to very good tolerances.  I'm going to try replacing both passenger doors to see if that doesn't solve it.  I plan to eventually repaint the whole car anyway.

[shanebo]

I found a roll of thin weather stripping in my basement that was about 1/4' thick and 3/4' wide. i put it around the the door opening and it seems to have solved about 90% of my leak issues...i still get a little water coming in when I power spray that area but it will work until I can fix it right

[mojobean]

wasn't there a slight difference in the window frame angle between sx/4 and spirit or was it eagle and hornet/concord? the angle was different at the top of the window frame near the b-pillar?

[carnuck]

AMX/Hornet was slightly different.