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  #221  
Old 01-14-2020, 04:10 PM
Fargoman Fargoman is offline
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Would an alternative be to shorten the front "överhang"on the door so it isn't travelling so far when in motion?

This would make the rear of the fender longer.
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  #222  
Old 01-15-2020, 11:33 AM
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heinke heinke is offline
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Originally Posted by Fargoman View Post
Would an alternative be to shorten the front "överhang"on the door so it isn't travelling so far when in motion?

This would make the rear of the fender longer.
I'll look into that. I'm fairly certain the door hinges will need to be moved no matter what I do. I'm just glad I'm working it out at this stage and not after the doors had been built.
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  #223  
Old 01-21-2020, 03:02 PM
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heinke heinke is offline
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Post Door Engineering Progress

The door hinge location is now sorted out and verified with a test mockup on drivers side door. As a reminder, I needed to move the door hinges outward while retaining the original door frame position as the side windows needed to maintain their original positions. The hinges were moved outboard by 2 ¼” putting the pins a lot closer to the door skins. I did this by using 2” square tubing with a ¼ plate added to the outside. I also raised the bottom hinge vertically by an inch in order to give it some space above the lower rocker. It couldn’t be raised prior because of a space conflict with door wire loom but the hinge base is now outboard of wire loom conduit so there was no longer a conflict with raising it.

As you might guess, this outward change in door hinge geometry then requires other changes due to new considerations. Moving the hinges outward now put the hinge bases squarely into the door pocket and thus the door skins would hit them. Thus I needed to shorten the amount of door skin forward of the hinge pin so it wouldn’t contact the hinge base. If you recall, I had added length there prior to move the door pocket forward. With the new outboard hinge location, the door pocket location could be moved 1 ½” aft and still have adequate clearance between front fender rear edge and door skin at full open position. By eliminating 1 ½” of the door skin forward of the hinge pins, there is now ½” clearance between the forward door edge (ruler simulating the door skin) and the hinge base at full open.



Now the real test for the core issue causing hinge relocation in the first place; does the door skin in the transition area from vertical to horizontal still contact the front fender?



The door skin edge in this area now moves away from the front fender edge as the door moves into the open position. So test passed! I still need to further strengthen the hinge relocation bits with gussets, etc. but I feel good about the results. There appears to be adequate clearance on the whole leading edge of the door skin while opening the door.

My main lesson learned here is to establish required door hinge location as a 1st step prior to locating the door pocket and surely before fabricating any body parts. The door pocket is now 1 ½” aft of where I located it prior and this is ½” aft of my original guesstimate location. It also reinforces that you need to have all the door hinge geometry finalized and tested prior to building out substructures, frameworks, and any sheet metal work. As it is, I have a small amount of re-work but nothing compared to if I’d built out fender or door skins already.
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  #224  
Old 01-22-2020, 04:23 AM
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Gojeep Gojeep is offline
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Glad you have it all worked out. It is these sort of things that take a lot of time that no one else will ever appreciate once done.
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  #225  
Old 01-22-2020, 08:20 AM
metal manny metal manny is offline
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Well done Joel! What a herculean effort for such a seemingly "small thing". Overall it's coming together very sweetly...
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  #226  
Old 01-24-2020, 11:14 AM
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heinke heinke is offline
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Originally Posted by Gojeep View Post
Glad you have it all worked out. It is these sort of things that take a lot of time that no one else will ever appreciate once done.
Marcus: your insight is spot on. If I added up my time making the initial drivers door mockup units and then strengthening them for final use, I bet I'll have 3 days of work into them along with a dozen repetitions of removing/installing the door frame for measurements, marking, test fitting, etc.

Of course, the passenger side should only take a portion of the time but still the whole exercise will be about a week of time. I'm sure no one will look in there and recognise the hinges have been moved at all, at least I hope my work is good enough that this modification goes unnoticed.
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  #227  
Old 01-27-2020, 12:51 PM
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Superleggera Superleggera is offline
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Job well done. I've seen too many "door projects" result in doors that do not properly open as intended. Final test is for yourself to open the door and get inside and it closes as expected. It is something that sounds so easy to make happen but truthfully can be a pain to engineer properly to use for decades to come.
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  #228  
Old 01-27-2020, 01:06 PM
cliffrod cliffrod is offline
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Great stuff, Joel. I agree there are many who will never even consider, much less appreciate, what details like these require for success. Still, there's also many of us that find such things represent the real technical prowess and achievement of the job. Congratulations.
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  #229  
Old 01-28-2020, 04:53 PM
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heinke heinke is offline
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Post Door Engineering Progress (cont)

Here’s what I fabricated to do the door hinge relocation. For the upper hinge, I’m using long bolts that go all the way through the block. For the lower hinge, I couldn’t do this given the hinge was also raised by 1 inch in addition to the 2 ¼” outboard move. So roll bar gussets were used to reinforce the lower relocation block.





The door frame parts are still just tack welded at this point. I’ll final weld once I get further along to make sure there won’t be some sort of clearance issues.
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  #230  
Old 01-28-2020, 06:19 PM
crystallographic crystallographic is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by heinke View Post
Here’s what I fabricated to do the door hinge relocation. For the upper hinge, I’m using long bolts that go all the way through the block. For the lower hinge, I couldn’t do this given the hinge was also raised by 1 inch in addition to the 2 ¼” outboard move. So roll bar gussets were used to reinforce the lower relocation block.





The door frame parts are still just tack welded at this point. I’ll final weld once I get further along to make sure there won’t be some sort of clearance issues.

I dunno about anyone else, but doors have been one serious series of headaches for me in chassis fab/mod.s
Good to see you are doing double and triple confirmations of fixed and mobile geometries. (did a scissor hinge car once....urk .... = note to self: stick with modern technology!)
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