Fitting fiberglass "R" doors with factory window frames....

[HEIMBACH]

Shop is in the process of fitting R style doors to 911. Looking for advice on mounting frames into door, as inside of door does not have any brackets/tabs etc. Pictures,advice? Thanks.

[TimT]

Its pretty easy, you will have to make a bracket the holds the long center piece (at the rear of the vent window) to the bottom of the door, and I shortened the front and rear door channels so they just bolt to the top of the door. Finally its a good idea to used some rubber sheet between the window frame and the fiberglass, and make sure they use nylock nuts. The frames will loosen up from time to time.

[katigbr]

Heimbach,
I'm not sure how generally applicable this advice as it may depend on who and how your 911R doors were made. Mine was fairly straightforward to install. It did involve a lot of trial fitting and grinding to fit the stock window frame and door latch mechanism.

The nice thing about 911R doors is that there is a fair bit of room to get your hands into the door frame for marking/drilling.

The steps I went through (if I remember correctly) were:

Step 1. Trial fitting of window frame into door opening. I had to do a fair bit of grinding to get the door opening width to accept the two window frame uprights and sit square in the door openings.

Step 2. Alignment and Positioning. Once I had the frame in, I closed the door and checked for the rough orientation I needed to have the window sit flush in the doorway opening. I used some fairly firm bracing inside to hold the frame in the correct positioning to ensure it would stay that way when I re-opened the door. You'll need to check both the front-back rocking and side-side vertical planes.



Step 3. Drilling and bolting. With the window frame in rough alignment and wedged in, you should be able to use a 1/8" drill bit to drill through the mounting bolt holes in the rearward post to act as a pilot hole. There are upper and a lower bolt position. Make sure you are drill alignment is good otherwise it will be twisted when you tighten it up. Once these pilot holes are drilled from the inside you can chase these pilot holes with the appropriate size bits for the mounting bolts (M8?) you'll need to verify the lengths to ensure they don't protrude into the window channel and interfere with the window travel.

I did not drill and bolt the forwardmost frame hole due to inaccessiblity problems. Because I used fairly light lexan I wasn't worried about the load.

I used an "L" shaped piece of 1/8" steel to create a mounting bracket for the inner window channel frame. It is roughly 3-4" in length and is bolted to the interior door frame and then to the window channel frame. See Pics.


Step 4. Final adjustments. You can make the bolt holes in the F/G doors elongated to allow some travel for adjustments. Close enough was good enough in my case.

Let me know if you need more info or pictures.

Kind regards,
Rick

[TimT]

oops I thought you meant the fiberglass nascar style doors. In any event its a similar process