I'm planning on painting the car mostly the way the factory did, which means with the doors on the car. My question is about the striker. Did Ford have the strikers on the car during paint or were they added later? I see on many different restoration paint photos that many cars are sprayed with the strikers off which leads to the question, how do you mount and adjust the strikers without marring/scratching the new paint?
I use a hand impact tool, with a large ball peen hammer to remove and install the screws. The screws are an "interference fit" to prevent them backing out. It takes several blows to do it right. The spacers are dimpled to keep the striker from moving. From what I remember, masking tape was involved to locate the striker prior to final installation to lower the possibility of scratches. How to actually do that I forget, all that was said was, "We used masking tape."
Jim
