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Thanks for the input Paul, yes you are right, the slightest angle of change, seems to make a HUGE difference as to how the door performs when it opens.
I think before I do any huge amount of work (possibly in the wrong direction) I need to play with it a lot to see all the possibilties, and to figure out what the correct thing to do is!!
Could you not have perspex quarter lights fixed with a bottom swivel to the door perspex so that they only needed to be folded backwards and downwards flush with the door top to open the door? Some sort of inconspicuous catch would be needed at the top join but it wouldn't (IMHO!) look as out of place as fixed quarter lights.
Whatever, I do Mick, if its in the area of quarter lights, the door must be able to open without doing anything else first.
Otherewise passengers would always need to be briefed, or something would be broken if they opened the door normally.
I really did think of a similar thing, and discarded it for that very reason. Just think how irritating it would be to have to remember to do something else every time the door needed to be open?
Looking at the picture of the demonstrator and then your car shows the problem. The door pivots around its front edge which on the demonstrator is aligned with the back edge of the windscreen. Because the pivot point is aligned with the front of the door and the back of the screen the two stay aligned when the door opens so nothing touches.
On yours, the windscreen stops a couple of inches in front of the door edge. This means if you extend the side window to meet the screen it will be in front of the pivot point and so clash when the door is opened.
The choices are to move the windscreen back (or fit a quarter light) or move the pivot point forward. To moved the pivot point forward you would need some long and strange shaped hinges. I am guessing a quarter light may be your better option if you plan on keeping that windscreen.
In the above picture, when the door starts to open, the front edge of that ally, which would be the window, moves at a 45 degree angle outwards, but also forwards, so putting a bit at the bottom would actually make it worse WCA
It is a bit of a bummer. However, it is an engineering problem and can be solved, I just have to work out how I am going to do it.
I still lean towards a quarter light though.....
I thank you all for your input, and I do consider all your options.
Putting the hinges on the rear and making the doors into suicide doors, is a good idea, but like they say on "Catchphrase" sorry, its the wrong one!
Re-doing the door hinges WCA, is so "last week"
So, on with the cunning plan..........
I will go ahead with what was my first gut feeling when I realised with horror that I had screwed up badly, which is ------quarter lights.
Quarter lights seem to have put some people off a bit, but not me.
I see them as my salvation, and my reasonably easy way out of this mess I'm in.
I will make them in stainless steel, so they look like chrome, they will match the rest of the exterior trim, and be elegant and hopefully look the part and look as though they should be there.
I have made a mock up to give myself an idea of what to aim for, and here it is:
