240Z: Unfolding the bottom door fold / seam

As regular reader, you might know i plan to bring a few panels and stuff to professional paint stripping soon so i’m preparing a few things. Talked to my bodyshop guy yves, about this and he recommanded me to open the fold at the bottom of the door to get all the rust removed and see how it looks inside. As he’s the professional and i’m not i do whatever he says. First i needed some special tools. An Unfolding plier for bodyshops and a spotweld-romver drill.

So this is how i started. Rusty buttom of the door but otherwise nice (note pictures are mixed up from two different doors, so don’t be confused, one is a lot better then the other door is..)

First removed the rubber sealing above the seal / fold with a small spatula. Then it looked like this:

Then decided to remove old rust, debris and paint with a scotch and brite CSD disk. This are brilliant for that kind of work:

This was the result:

Next i removed all the spotwelds with the drill (sorry, forgot to make pics) and then started to unfold the fold with the special pliers:

Worked out really great and after only 30 minutes the door looked like this (after another cleaning with the CSD Disk). So the doors are ready for paintstripping now 🙂