Late, late, late for work. The clock is ticking, so you sprint from the parking lot to the office building at top speed—and hope you don’t lose your shoes. You take one last glance across the lot to check on your car, and see that your driver’s door is open. Rats. You double-time to the car and slam the door—which simply bounces back open. A second attempt, mightier than the first, only bounces it back further, right into your knee. Ouch. You try a kinder, gentler slam, and realize the end of the door has sagged a good inch from its original position. The only way to close the door is to use both hands on the handle (chipping a fingernail) and lift the 75-pound door up until the latch matches the height of the door striker, and then bump it with your hip to click it shut. What a pain. Guess what? Your door hinges are worn out.How Much?
A mechanic, supposedly a good, honest one, had told the driver of this ’90s Jeep Grand Cherokee that the door hinges needed to be replaced, and that Jeep didn’t make the parts anymore. Used hinges were ordered from a salvage yard, and the bill was estimated to come in at $400 to $500.
We’ll give the mechanic some credit (his expertise is in engines, brakes and suspensions, not bodywork) for being honest in his estimate. But we knew better. Cutting out the old hinges and welding in new ones would probably cost about that much, but it wasn’t necessary. Why spend a couple of days replacing the hinge when all that’s worn out are some simple bushings? A trip to the NAPA auto parts store and a few minutes of browsing the catalogs turned up a Dorman part number specific to our Jeep. And plenty of other vehicles were listed, all the domestics and Asian and European cars as well.
In fact, the dimensions—the inside and outside diameter of the bushings, the pin diameter and the overall length—are listed in the catalog. If there isn’t a kit, a clever Saturday Mechanic could probably mix and match enough parts to fix darned near any door. A minute’s worth of detective work proved that the pin on our Jeep was 0.372 inches, nominally 3/8 of an inch. And the outer diameter of the bushings was 0.503 inches, a nice press-fit for a half-inch hole. Yours will be similar but probably not the same.
Lipped Oilite bronze bushings are available at industrial supply houses in a dizzying array of sizes. A pair of these and a length of bar stock would let you make almost any car door fit.
We didn’t need to go to those lengths. We found a $6.95 kit for this truck at the auto parts store—although we did have to order it. We walked into the store at 8:45 am and had the part in our hand right after lunch. Nice.
Lift and Separate
We pulled the truck into the shop, and lifted the open door up slightly with a floor jack to unweight the hinge. No floor jack? A stack of 2 x 4 scraps or a scissors jack will do. Even a patient assistant who doesn’t mind reverse-curling a car door for 10 minutes or so will do. Don’t let the door hang by only one hinge, lest the remaining hinge bend.
Some OEM door-hinge pins are retained by E-rings or cotter pins, making their removal trivial. Just pop out the cotter or E-ring, and push the hinge pin out. Ours was swaged into place, requiring us to grind the head of the old pin down. If you plan on rebushing a lot of doors, there are special tools to press the pins out. Regardless, you’ll need to remove the pin somehow.
With the pins tapped out, it’s a simple task to remove the inner hinge by unscrewing the bolts that hold it to the A-pillar. Press or tap the new bushings into the removed hinge half. Installation is the reverse of this procedure. With a friend or a jack holding the door so all the holes line up, tap the pin into place. Odds are the pin is tapered slightly to help get it started. Lightly tighten the hinge bolts.
Our Jeep’s pin had to be tapped in from the bottom, to clear the door sheet metal. Although the head of the pin was knurled to hold it into its gravity-defying place, we elected for a more positive retention system; we just tacked it with a MIG welder.
Now close the door. It should line up properly with the fender or door, front and rear. If not, loosen the bolts slightly, and reposition the inner hinge half to make it fit properly. Tighten the bolts.
Belt and Suspenders
To repair that top hinge, we invested a total of about 10 minutes. Surprisingly, the lower hinge bushings were very lightly worn, so we left them alone. If you need to tighten up the lower hinge, finish the top hinge first, and align the door. Then tackle the lower hinge. There are two reasons for this: First off, there are probably a bunch of wires that run into the door to run power windows and locks, and you don’t want to have to hold the door still enough to keep from tearing them free as both hinges are disconnected. Secondly, realigning the door will be much simpler one hinge at a time.
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