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Door problem fix

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GSXRunner

Proven Member
160
36
Feb 24, 2013
Queens, New_York
Since posting about my door problem and the welding job I needed to do, I haven't gotten much advice; I guess no one on here had to do any of this before. Since I wound up repairing it myself with excellent results, I decided to share my results so others may benefit if they have the same problem.

Here is the rust damage in the door jam, under my lower door hinge that prevented me from reattaching the door. If you have a sagging door, have someone try to lift the door while you watch the hinges. If they move, this is probably your problem.

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After grinding off all the rust and removing the inner threading.

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I then spot welded the cracks to help strengthen the structure. I grinded everything smooth (not shown)
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Here is the piece of 1/8" stock I prepared. I positioned the hinge onto the stock piece and sprayed some paint to register where the holes need to be drilled.
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I placed the nuts into position to be tack welded. I also tapped the 1/8" stock to give some extra threading.
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Here I spot welded the nuts to the stock piece. I used some galvanizing compound on the back (not shown) to protect it from future rusting.
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I enlarged the holes in the door jam. These needed to be bigger to allow for the nuts to have a place to go and be able to move the plate from side to side for alignment. I was worried about all the rust on the inside, so I sprayed a rust converter in there before welding.

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Here I have the plate held into position. This is for illustration purposes only. I bolted the piece to the door hinge first, then I put the door on and tightened the bolts for the upper hinge. At this point, I made sure my door was lined up. It appeared to be without even doing anything. Just before tack welding the piece, I put as much pressure as I could with my left hand pushing on the bottom door hinge toward the rear bumper to get any slack out because when you open the door, the weight of the door will be pushing quite hard on the bottom hinge and so any slack will give you sag. I then spot welded it at four points before testing.

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The door opened and closed perfectly after that without any sag whatsoever. I unbolted the door and completed the weld. The weld came out rather ugly so I didn't bother taking pictures. I only had a cheap flux core welder at hand. The weld was plenty strong though. I was worried about water getting in the tiny cracks and rusting my work, so I used fiberglass waterproof filler and finished it. I primed it with self etching primer and topcoated it. I could have spent more time and made it look perfect, but since no one is going to see it, after the door is mounted, I didn't want to spend too much time doing that.

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This is what it looked like after the hinge was bolted on.
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You can see the alignment is perfect now.
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All the body lines line up now, but I did have to shim the fender a little bit. I'm quite happy with the results. After all, the car would be unusable without doing this and I'm sure I would be looking at at least a couple of grand to have a body shop do it.
 
These are the skill that newbies need. Find the problem, fix the problem. Everything is fixable with enough knowledge and skill.
 
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