After looking for a 1938-1939 Ford Cabover driver door for the last 18 months with no luck, I decided to build one.
This is the last thing I wanted to do because of the amount of time it would take.
The best choice for a donor is a 1939 Ford pickup door. Since I have a 1938 Ford pickup door, I'll use this.
It is the second and only other choice for a donor. Yes the '38 and '39 doors are different as you will see later on.
The first thing I needed to do was make a template/pattern off the good passenger COE door I have.
Once I had the pattern, I traced it on the pickup door and trimmed off the excess metal.
The first major obstacle I started to tackle is the lower door hinge. The lower hinge of the pickup door
is a complete reverse of the Cabover door. My cab has the COE hinge halves,
so I only need to make the door side hinge halves. The lower hinge on the pickup cab jamb side
will work for the lower hinge on the COE door. Simple fix. Next I needed to make a lower hinge mount on the door.
Here I cut a notch on the door's hat channel on the hinge side. I cut out the whole hinge side to fix this.
Then welded in a 1/4" plate to mount the lower hinge.
Here you can see the new lower hinge mounted and where I removed the old upper hinge.
I mounted the door. The new lower hinge location is spot on and the body lines all align perfectly.
But now you can clearly see that the pickup door is too short at the bottom.
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