yeah that door looks pretty shot. best bet would be a new one. im sure the bottom of the door looks just as bad too. the hours it would take to replace that seems unnecessary when a new door is like 4 bolts and your done. if you did want to fix it though i'd cut right along that factory line in the middle of the door and re-skin the bottom. that line would help hide the welding and body work. i understand rust free panels are not always as avaliable. good luck
Rusty door My drivers door looks just like that and I thaught about fixing it, but a friend here in town has a parts car and will sell me a door for $50.00. Four bolts and your done? don't I need to take the front fender off to reach all the hinge bolts? If I can change the door without pulling the fender I will do it that way!
i mean you can open the door and look right in and see the hinge bolts. ive never doon it but you can clearly see everything you need to un-do. a fender is no big deal either. alot easier on uni-body cars. its like a 10 min job unless the bolts are rusted on
Yeah if you can find a good rust free replacement door. that would be the best and easiest. Not sure if anyone makes a lower door skin for a maverick, or how it would fit if someone did. I've fixed worst though. All 4 door bottoms on my old bonneville were really rusted out bad including the inside. Junkyard wanted $100 or more a piece for them I believe, and times that times 4, and that car was nothing special or really worth much anyways. I picked up a big sheet of 18 gauge (20 gauge will be a little easier to form) and had more then enough to patch all 4 doors entire door bottom from below the molding, rebuild the inside of the door that the door skin flanges over, and a bunch of other patches I had to do. I made a template of the door bottom I had to replace, and used it to mark and cut the sheetmetal, leaving enough at the edges to make the flanged edges, and then compared what I had to the door as I formed the metal. Then I drilled out the spot welds around the perimeter of the door edge inside, and cut it off lengthwise below the molding to remove the old metal. blasted and Rebuilt the inside piece with some new metal, and then welded top seam solid and spotwelded edge inside after hammering over. Door bottoms are not real difficult to form the curve of, but If you have access to a sheetmetal brake to form nice crisp edges, it would be a lot easier. I had to cut slits and weld them back up after folding over to help form my edges., and do some bodywork where I rebuilt inside and at the seam of the old and new piece. Make sure to weld very slowly and skip around where you will be welding the seam between the old piece and you new piece. If you do a lap weld, make sure to treat between the two pieces with a weld through primer and spray a rust preventative coating on the back side of the piece. Quite a bit of work. The first door I did, I warped it a bit, and my gap at the bottom wasn't real good. I got much better by the 4th door, lol, and later did the same to an old cavalier and it turned out pretty good. Practice makes perfect, and plenty of rust to get practice with in the upper midwest. Unless you have worked a bit with welding, forming sheetmetal and bodywork as well as the equiptment to do it, you probably are gonna want to find a new rust free door, and don't have to worry as much about rust wanting to come back. But if you just try to bondo or fiberglass over that without replacing metal, I give it about 6 months before its back bubbling new paint. Probably be week enough that if you poke at it a little with a screwdriver you'll be able to make some holes. Heres what the bonneville looked like before, and even worst then you can see from the pic. Wisconsin can be brutal to sheetmetal.
