Fitting the doors

Things have been pretty busy at work over the last few months, so I haven’t done a lot of work to the old beast.

However, things have quietened down a lot now, and it’s time to get back to doing some more restoration.

Besides, winter is coming on and the concept of driving without doors is getting a lot less attractive.

I saw some door tops on eBay, priced at $140 for the pair delivered from the UK. Given that the going price from Australian sites is $135 for a single door top, that had to be a bargain.

I had already bought new hinge bolts for all the hinge bolts a while back, so was just about ready to go.

Oh, I also had to buy new bailey channels to slide the glass in.

I went down the back, and dragged up all the available doors. Having had a look at them, I found a pair which looked to be in reasonable condition.

Thank goodness, I was able to get the door tops off them with a lot of WD40 and a modicum of belting with a big hammer.

FWIW, I had four other doors, and was completely unable to get the tops off them. I ended up cutting the skins off for the aluminium sheet, and scrapping the frames and tops.

After that it was wire brush on the angle grinder, prime, paint, and put the glass back in.

Anyway, pictures below.

Cleaned back and primed.

Painted and ready.

Door tops painted and ready.

The door locks cleaned and painted. But more on the door locks below . . .

All of the assorted shrapnel ready to fit the doors.

All assembled and fitted.

Fitting the glass into the door tops. This was a serious bugger of a job. I did it quicker and better on the second one, after I had worked out that the trick is to silicone the aluminium spacers onto the bailey channel before attempting to drill the holes for the self-tappers into matching spots in the bailey channel and the door top.

And the whole thing finally fitted into place.

A couple of after words.

Getting the door to fit into place was a bit of a work of art. Pretty near everything around the door had to be adjusted, sometimes with a big hammer.

The door locks have been a problem. They are old and worn, and the bolt moves laterally within its keeper. That means that, even after multiple adjustments of the strikers, I still have to slam the doors, and they still rattle quite a lot.

I really need to get some new locks, which aren’t that expensive from LR Series or LR Direct, but the shipping is a killer. I’ll sit on this one for a while.