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DOUG JENKINS: Hi, I'm Doug. I work with twenty great guys in St. Louis at Doug Jenkins Custom
Hot Rods, and we're going to do some work for you today on Expert Village. Ralph has
done the preliminary frame measurements and we've learned some good things. The first
round, if you remember, we showed that the left front of the car, the fender was three
quarters of an inch higher than the right front fender. Likewise, the left rear fender
is--what is it? 3/8 higher than the right rear. The first thing Ralph measured was the
distance between the spring and the frame at the front of the car, and he got six and
three quarters on both sides. Then he measured, from the front ball joints, from the lower
ball joint to a point on the frame on both sides that was obviously machined in from
new, and he trusted it that it was equal side to side, and it was. He got exactly seventy-nine
inches to the bottom of each ball joint, that's pretty incredible. Most cars are not this
straight. I daresay most new cars you buy will have at least an eighth inch difference,
this is pretty remarkable. And likewise, the thrust angle from the center point of the
rear axle to that same point on the frame, he came up with fifty-seven and 3/8 on both
sides. There's a slight difference in the spring height, however, in the rear. Measuring
from the spring to the frame in the rear, he came up with nine and an eighth for the
right and nine and a quarter for the left, pretty small. The next thing Ralph did was
measure from the bottom of the frame of the car, from front to rear, to the frame rack.
So the frame rack is pretty much an absolute zero and he measures to the frame. So he picked
the spot at the very front and they're both at ten and a quarter. A little bit further
back, he had six inches here, six and a quarter on the other side, pretty close. Nine and
a quarter, nine and 5/16, very close. Seven and a quarter on both sides, perfect. Seven
and 5/8 on both sides. But we get to the back of the car and it's a half inch higher at
the very left rear than the right rear. So we noticed when we started this project that
there was some obvious lean at the back of the car and an obvious door fit problem. So
it's not yet clear what exactly is happening. It does seem clear that the frame is bent
at the rear slightly, half an inch, left to right, but we still don't have a clear explanation
of why the right side door doesn't fit. So now Ralph is going to do some more measuring
and he's going to look for crushed body mounts, rotten floor, missing, bushing, something
like that, in order to explain the poor fit on the door. We don't yet know if we're going
to go to the effort to straighten the frame. We'll make some more measurements, we'll give
it some more thought, and talk to our customer and see what he'd like to do.