My truck (which I just bought) has 280K and the lower hinge on the driver side door had totally broke off the door subframe, so it was time for a major repair. I could tell a the previous owner tried to rewelded it atleast once and apparently he didn't do it right because there was little to no penitration on his welds and they didn't last.

Anyways, This is what I found once I got the door gutted and removed from the vehicle and cut away the top layer of sheetmetal around the lower hinge.



So I cleaned up the old pieces as best as I could with a grinder and tacked them into place. I also tried to grind out some of the stress fracture cracks that I found.



Then I welded up everythign 100% and ground it smooth and flat.



Then I made a cardboard templete for the new piece of sheetmetal that I was going to weld over top of everthing.



Then I took a piece of probaby 18 ga metal and cut it out. And for the slots I decided to just use a oversized hole saw for each slot; that would give me room around each hole to weld the new "sheetmetal" piece to the lower main structure of the door. Then I gound it down flat and smooth again.



Its not pretty - but it should be able to hold the door on for a long time in the future. I'm fairly happy with the repair.

Just wanted to share what I did for the repair......... Thats all.

 

Hey a bit of paint considering where its at, no one will ever know,
(but the members here). And it looks strong so imo its a great fix.

 

I have one to do, just never got the time to it yet. Nice job.

 

I have had to do that repair also,
taking the S shaped spring out of the lower hinge will take the stress off the door attachment area and also the pins and bushings will last much longer.

Jim

 

yeah, my door is overdue for this repair as well. nice work!

 

Nice work! I had an 86 do the same thing, only my repair was FAR less sophisticated than yours , I had no rust, pnly stress cracking, so i backed up the hinge with some scrap steel and HUGE fender washers. I did`nt look too purty but the door did`nt fall off either

 

Rick, its good to see you here! I've been a member of pirate for a few years now (I'm nitrorclover) and I always love your build ups. They are chock full of great info. It will be GREAT to have you here in the first gen forums!!

 

Nice work. I whimped out and had a body shop do the work...........I helped hold the door.

 

Would I be to bold in saying that this belongs in the sticky? It is a great write up.

 

Thanks for the compliments guys.... I was also surprised at how fast this repair actually went. Only took about 3 hours from start to finish.....

 

since you have had the door appart, a few questions:

Mine just has a few cracks. Is there room to get in from the back side of one that is still assembled and put a reinforcement plate in?

Or should I just take some 1/8" plate and make a larger area over the existing surface? It would make the door stick out just a tiny amount at the bottom when closed is all.

My door has really nice paint on it so I need to get some of those welding blankets from HF or something to keep the sparks off.

 

On the inside, there is a floating plate that is threaded that is captured in there by some tabs, so you can't really repair it from the back side with it on the vehicle. But you could remove the door, and them bend those mounting tabs out of the way and remove that threaded plate and make a new on that is bigger (more surface area). and at that time weld up from the back side. but its kinda hard to see the inside side.

 

to keep from the sparks from damaging the paint you could mask off the area with a couple of layers of aluminum foil.