Door lock striker and fork bolt adjustment

[bluesmokennoise]

My restoration of a 1991 Pontiac Sunbird is coming along fine, actually I am nearing the end of it. I bought two used doors and have installed them with new pins and bushings. The driver's side door worked just fine without adjustment. The passenger's side door is a different matter. When I close it it won't fully close. When I close the door lightly it does latch but won't latch all the way to a fully-closed position and is a little ajar and protruding from the flush lines of the body. When I really slam it, the door fully latches and is flush with the body of the car but when I lift the door handle to open the door it "kerchunks" and gives the tactile feeling that the fork bolt was lifted up over something before it was freed. I have tried all the tricks on the Internet and have adjusted, re-adjusted (many times) the hinges after elevating it with a floor jack. But nothing seems to change. When I close the door it acts as if the door has to "ride up" on the fork bolt so it seems like the striker bolt might be too low. I have unscrewed the striker bolt and there is supposed to be (as per the factory service manual) a "floating cage plate" behind the tapped hole that you screw the striker bolt into. I do not seem to observe any "floating" of the cage plate. It acts as if the tapped hole that the striker bolt screws into is stationary. I am a little fearful of playing with the tapped hole or the floating cage plate that is behind it because I do not want the thing to fall into the bowels of the car's body. The factory service manual has a procedure for enlarging the pillar hole behind which is the tap that goes into the cage plate. Am I misreading it or if I were to use a grinder wheel on my drill to enlarge the plate, would the "floating cage plate" remain in place except then I could then move up or down, depending on how big the hole is that I grind out? By the way, I have not re-installed the door springs yet.

I also have been looking at the fork bolt and see there are three screws that hold it in. Is there any adjustment that can be made on the fork bolt?

 

[92 Sunbird LE]

If it does fall down , it can be retrieved with a magnet tool or take off the inner plastic to get it..had do that once when I clipped my gate when the windows were fogged on morning and tore up my quarter panel and that stiker area...

Hopefully your door pins and bushings are in good shape and the door doesn't sag..

Doug in P.R.

 

[bluesmokennoise]

As always, thanks Doug for weighing in. The more I look at the fork assembly I believe the 3 screws on the door edge must be just to hold the fork
assembly...so I am back to that striker bolt and its tapped cage.
If I enlarge the hole in the pillar that surrounds the tapped hole, should I be able to move the tapped hole up or down depending on which way I ground away the pillar metal?

 

[bluesmokennoise]

UPDATE: With a flat end rotary drill file I enlarged the pillar hole in the direction that it needed to be. I have no "modeling clay" or child's clay but my wife
concocted "Play Doe" on the stove from just kitchen ingredients. (She's a keeper!) Once it cooled it worked like a charm. Anyway, the door now shuts perfectly. Now on to the other 110,000 things I need
to do to finish up. :O