Convertible body flex

[Rich G]

I'm working on my 70 challenger convertible body and doing the final fender alignment and block sanding. It's just the rolling body with legs and wheels mounted to the front bumper location and rear spring mount location point. I bolted the K frame in just to tighten things up a bit. When I roll the car out of the garage I notice a lot of flex in the body so the hood to fender gaps change especially if one wheel is off the lip of the garage floor. This was a rust free car so that's not an issue. Do these cars tighten up once the whole car is put together? Hard to line things up when things move. Damn convertibles.

[1 Wild R/T]

Some are terrible, some are very good.... I think it has to do with how well the guy putting spot welds in place did his job......  I've seen cars that the windshield would move when the door was opened... Scary....  My current Convertible I can raise the LF corner till the tire comes off the ground & at that point the LR & RF are both lifted quite a bit & I can still open & close the drivers door with normal effort & the gaps still look normal...  I can also lift it on my rack & open/close both doors...  If I were doing a vert these days I'd add US Car Tool sub-frame connectors & I've considered doing it to this car but honestly it doesn't flex much & the bottom of the car is fully painted so I can't justify the work.....  Sounds like the car your working on could use the help....

[Finoke]

Wild R/T is spot on. I've owned a bunch of e body convertibles over the last 20 years and they all varied on the amount of flex. I've had some rusty cars with no flex and some super solid cars with a lot of flex. No explaining it.

I got in the habit of jacking up any e body with just two jack points. Center of the rear or center of the k frame.

I'm also lucky on my current car. Minimal flex and doors close fine even if jacked up.

[brotow]

Here's my 70 convert with sub frame connectors, not meant to be installed this way, but I think it looks better.

[Finoke]

Here's my 70 convert with sub frame connectors, not meant to be installed this way, but I think it looks better.

Nice install! That solves the problem.