Gutting The Doors, Part 5

Wednesday after work I started by scribing the outline of the door hinges on the driver side door. I really do not see any adjustments or how they can be mounted incorrectly, but it was mentioned multiple times online that it was important to do so - so I did.

Cary was going to meet me at 4:00PM, and I wanted to get the garage ready as much as I could so that we would not have to mess around with moving things out of the way. I took my bike down from the wall so that we would have more room to work on the passenger side door. I also set the new donor door up on sawhorses so we could gut and prep that one too.

Once I had made enough room in the garage I started removing the weatherstriping on the donor door. 

When Cary got here we started by unbolting the driver side door hinges.

The door was surprisingly easy to remove, but I am sure glad I had Cary there to hold the door instead of having to rely on a floor jack.

Here is the driver door completely gutted and removed from the car.

We moved on to the passenger side door next. Because of the close quarters on that side of the garage Cary started removing the weatherstriping while I worked on the donor door. The weatherstripping was split and did not run across the bottom of the door. It is surprising that the bottom of the passenger door is not rusted out.

Once the weatherstriping was removed Cary started working on the window triangle.

Here is the window triangle and window guide from the passenger door.

Removing the two window brackets was the next thing we tackled.

With the brackets removed we needed to raise the window a little so that we could move it around enough to get it off of the regulator arms. 

This is me trying not to short the wires and barbecue myself. :)

Once the window was raised to a better position we removed the center bracket and window guides. Then we slid the window around in the door to free it from the regulator arms.

With the window moving free in the door we were able to remove the mirror and window sweep.

Here is the passenger side door glass removed with the track still in place.

Passenger side window sweep and the interior door handle along with all of the other components we have removed so far.

We removed the exterior door handle next. This required separating the connecting rod between the handle and the door lock. 

We turned the speed nuts back onto the handle so we would not lose them.

The lock cylinder retaining clip was a little tricky, but we found that by rotating the clip it would pop right off. 

I used a long screwdriver and a rubber mallet to tap on and turn the retaining clip until the cylinder was free.

I tried but could not free the connecting rod for the interior door handle from the door lock.

Cary thought that he saw what was causing the problem, but he could not separate it either.

We decided to leave it and try to remove it as one piece once the lock actuator and bell crank were out. We decided to use the rotary tool to grind down the mandrels on the rivets in the door.

This worked much better than trying to keep the drill centered on them as I did with the driver side. Once they were ground down flush it was easy to drill them out.

Here is the power door lock actuator removed from the door.

There is only one rivet holding on the bell crank and it was easy to drill out.

We were able to remove the whole assembly as one piece.

We ground down all four rivets on the regulator and motor and removed that through the rear access hole in the door.

With everything out of the door we scribed the hinges and unbolted the door.

With both doors off the car, we just had to finish prepping the donor door. 

I worked on removing various leftover pieces and brackets while Cary removed what was left of the window triangle.

We noticed the mounting bracket for the armrest does not match the one on the door we just removed from the car. I am going to have to swap this one with the one from the original driver door.

The last thing we did before calling it a night was remove the side view mirror.

Having two people working really makes a difference. Thank you Cary for all your help and thank you Sara for providing dinner and taking all the wonderful pictures!