Wanted to buy: 1916 Roadster door

[Mike Lebsack-Iowa]

I just acquired a very nice original 1916 Roadster body with excellent original paint and very good upholstery. One item it is missing is the door. The latch was wired to the body but the door itself was no where to be found so it must have been used for another project. That said I am in need of a door in very good condition if anyone has one. Please contact me using the Forum PM function or respond on this parts page to have me contact you. Thanks, Mike

[Mike Lebsack-Iowa]

I think a 16 front Touring door is the same as well.

[Wayne Sheldon]

Those late brass/teens bodies can be tricky? My early 1915 runabout body (original body tag dates it as a February 1915) was missing its door. I had to try five doors to find two that were close to a fit. One was an unknown year, but 1915 or later front door. The fit wasn't great, but close enough I was able to help it a little. The other one that actually fit better, was a 1914 front door. Those are not common, and can be identified due the the door hinge mounting about one quarter inch higher in the door. So, for a few reasons, I decided to fit the one that was close, thinking it better to preserve the 1914 door for more appropriate future use.
The funny thing was, that after re-wooding and fitting and painting the silly door? I went to install the door hinge and the door. In that process, I discovered that my early 1915 runabout body wanted the door hinge mounted a quarter inch higher than the doors original hinge had been. So, rather than mess up what was clearly original on my early 1915 runabout body, I modified the metal and wood in my restored door to fit the body.

So now, I still wonder? Just when DID Ford make that minor change to the location of the door hinge?

Happy hunting and good luck!

[Mike Lebsack-Iowa]

Thanks Wayne for your experience and actual findings. I was also told that the 1915 to 1925 roadster doors are more or less the same?

[Wayne Sheldon]

Especially with the earlier. late brass and late 1910s cars? "More or less" is a rather loose term.
From about 1919 or 1920, I "think" the doors are pretty close to the same sheet metal through 1925. I could be wrong about that, having worked on so few post 1921 model Ts myself. I know there are minor changes through the years in the wood, door interior panel, door latches, and of course the 1925 door hinge is very different.
When I was scrounging parts for my 1915, a very good friend and I went through his pile of T body parts and tried fitting the several front doors he had into the body. Only one of four or five he had came even close to fitting the opening in the body. He kindly gave that one to me. I later went to a Bakersfield swap meet with that door, and notes about where it did not fit well, and compared that one to numerous others at the swap meet. I don't recall how many I compared it with, not a whole lot, but a fair number of them there. Most of them seemed more like the other ones he had that did not fit at all well. The only one that came close, and actually fit better, was the one I bought that was from a 1914, identified by the hinge placement.

Touring car rear doors of course come in a right and a left. The touring car front door and runabout's only door should be basically the same.

The early production of the new style bodies had difficulty in keeping up with the demand for the cars. I imagine that the five different companies supplying bodies those years probably varied somewhat in making the door openings and the doors themselves. Hence difficulty in finding doors to properly fit the earlier bodies. I suspect that before 1920, the outside suppliers as well as Ford was building bodies inhouse by 1919, were keeping the doors and door openings much more uniform.

It must be difficult having a nice original body and missing the matching door. Are you going to restore the body? Or try to keep it original and unite it with a 1916 chassis? Restoring a door to match an original body may be tricky, but can be done.
Regardless, I do hope you can find a door that fits the body well. Most of the doors I checked against my '15 would have required narrowing the sides, and altering the curve on the bottom. As rough as the body was, it was fairly clear the body itself was not distorted in a way to cause the problems. And re-wooding the body put the door's fit back to exactly where it started.