I have purchased wood kits for the three doors on my touring and it is obvious that the wood will not go in without major tweaking of the door metal or the wood joints. What have others done to successfully get the wood installed. I don't have any original wood to compare to. I would really appreciate some guidance with this problem.

Thank You.

I always cut my own wood,but fitting is still required.I hate to mess up the top of a door as it is difficult to get it right later.I open the sides and bottom up with a duck bill pliers and slip wood in from the bottom. A small air/disc sander is a great help.

I was fixing to post the same method that Jack Daron talks about.
Since your using wood door kits you need to remember that they wont just fall into place.

To start with Ford used up to 5 body makers for his cars. The wood you have will fit with some fitup and refitting.
The sheet metal is generally the same for the open cars in the in the 17-25 years for each particular year. Its the small details and the sheet metal that makes the wood fit up a little different because of the different body makers.

As Jack says open up the sheet metal with pliers or the duck bill style and carefully fit each piece a little at a time until you can make a good snug fit.
Take your time. If I can do it you can too.

I used wood in an original door for patterns. I modified it such that it would all slip in with the last piece locking the remainder in position. I did not cut any sheet metal. If you scratch your head a bit I imagine you can do the same.

I don't cut metal either.I just try to retain original shape of top of the door.

I didn't want to upset the original "piecrust" edges of my door panels, so I modified the joints on the timber pieces so I could insert them into the door skin and then I wedged the joints to drive the timbers back into the door panels. It worked a treat.

Hope this helps.
Allan from down under.

I cut a lap joint on the top piece of wood. This lets you install the wood without having to bend the door metal. The lap joint is then glued and screwed after the wood is in place.

Ron Dupree

I used a combination of Allan's and Ron's methods for my doors as it is much easier than opening an edge. No,I better change that. It is much easier than closing the edge back up and still having it look good.

I carefully used furniture clamps to gently close the sides of the door then used a light hammer to close the nailing areas onto the the wood. Doing it this way worked pretty good for me . It gave a nice finished look to the door.

I had a older never used wood kit that was made by Fordwood for my 21 Touring.

The instructions that came with the kit used the method of carefully opening up the door edges just enough to slip in and fit the wood.

I'm surprised that there are so many curves and angles to the wood. I've got a lot of fitting to do even before the final assembly. It will give me plenty of time to fret about the solution. I appreciate your input and experience, based on the actual success of your restorations and I feel much better about proceeding. I also have some small rust pinholes in the bottom of the rear doors. Not sure yet what to do to fix them, but what ever it is, the wood at the bottom of each door will be affected.

I saw a guy fit a woodless door to his car, so all the edges met the body properly, then he took a small piece of plywood, fastened some wood block to it a the corners and bondo'd them to the door skin. This kept the door in the correct shape to match his body while he made wood for the door. Once all was done, it was a simple thing to knock off the wood blocks and sand off the bondo. Voila, a fitted door.

When I built the wood frame for the 17 touring from a set of paper plans, I ended up with a 20" high pile of sawdust.. I don't expect starting with rough cut pieces will be much different.