1961 E-Type OTS – Roadster Doors

This post details the restoration of a pair of doors from a late ’61 (possibly early ’62…) roadster.  The doors on the early cars have several subtle differences that set them apart from the average Series 1 door, and we’ll restore these doors properly – keeping all of those features intact.

These doors belong to a car on the very edge of transition from flat floors to the later floors with the dished footwell.  We know this because the car was originally built WITH footwells, but WITHOUT the dished rear lower bulkhead for moving the seat back further – an interesting combination, and so I guess we know which improvement came first – if only on one car!

I grew up in a later 3.8 roadster with footwells, and always had my seat all the way back – and I’m only 5’-9”!  I had two friends about 6’-2”, and both of them found it very tough to drive the car, actually.  Recently, I have been sorting out the ’61 roadster for sale on my website, and from the very first drive, it felt weird…  First, I just was dying to get the seat back a few inches!  The foot placement didn’t seem too strange at first, but after about 15 minutes, my leg started to cramp up!  I guess I’ve gotten used to that because that went away, but I can see why they went with these two changes early in the production of E-Types, and I’m all for it!

Anyway, back to the doors…  The car is currently in Texas, but it must be one of the damper areas of Texas, because they are very rusty.  Just about every door that comes through the shop now needs both a new skin and a new lower section of the inner shell.  These doors were also badly rusted in the forward, upper portion that forms a drip tray about 8” long below the windshield pillar.  This usually happens when the drip tray drain tube gets plugged up and water sits in there.  Ironically, these early doors have not one, but TWO EXTRA DRAIN HOLES from the factory, and they’re some of the rustiest I’ve seen yet up there!

Take a look through the photos to see some of the special features of these early doors, and our correct restoration of them back to 1961 specs:

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