95 Limited driver's door adjustment

[spguest]

Sorry if I have missed a previous thread which covers this and please do point me it if it exists. Clearly my search missed it.

Due an unforgiving bush the driver's door on our 95 Limited got pushed out of alignment. The manual says to slacken off the nuts and gently pry the door back into position.

Note the lack of a gap between door and fender.

I have encountered two challenges:
1) Getting at the bolts and nuts which hold the hinge to the main body work.

These are the nuts and bolts for the top hinge.

This is the bottom hinge. Note I cannot see or get at the lower rear nut which I assume is behind the door stay device.

The front bolts are also accessed through the now much narrower gap between door and fender.

How do I get at these nuts and bolts?

2) Even though I can reach the top hinge nut and bolt I cannot get a socket to fit on the front bolts top or bottom. When I put a 1/2" open ended wrench on the top nut I still cannot turn it and the nut is beginning to round. Likewise I cannot find a socket AF or metric which I can place on the forward bolts accessed between the door and fender.

What size are these nuts and bolts? Does anyone have a secret on how to make the adjustment to allow the door to move back into place? Do I need to remove the door to do this? The Haynes says I do not but I cannot work out the trick to avoid this.

 

[vroomzoomboom]

hold on for a min!
first off, have you loosen anything yet? if not lets start with something else. if you still have everything tight, and havent moved anything yet please do this first.
open the door haft way, and just grab it anyplace near the back of the door frame (like behind the window). see if the door has any movement by pushing it up, or down. what this is doing is seeing if you have good door pins and bushings. if you can move it with all the bolts tight, you will need to fix those first (normally its the bottom ones the go first)

 

[spguest]

Pins are good

I have already checked the pins and bushings which are firm with no give or play. It looks like they are still the originals which would need to be cut out.

It seems the offender has now confessed they were backing up with the door open and hit the door edge on a large bush which I am assuming pushed The door forward on the hinges.

I am attempting to get the pictures to show but this editor keeps treating the URL's special characters as their HTML versions. I am on my third online photo store - all without success.

 

[spguest]

I have now been able to find a photo site which will share my images and you can see the challenges in the original post of this thread.

 

[koda2000]

if you were backing up with the door open and hit something (we all make that mistake once) adjusting the hinges is probably not going to help, because you've bend the metal where the door attaches to the body or the hinges. if that's the case your best bet would be to take it to a body shop, as they have the tools and experience to fix the problem. even so, you may never get the door alignment back to 100%.

i had the driver's door off one of my trucks a few months ago (to fix a wiring problem). as i recall i just removed the 4 hinge bolts and it came right off. there really wasn't much (if any) adjustment available for the bolts. the door went right back on as it came off.

 

[vroomzoomboom]

your best bet would be to take it to a body shop, as they have the tools and experience to fix the problem.

believe it or not, 8 out of 10 times when you have to "adjust" a door, its a block of wood, and brute force.

 

[spguest]

Back from the body shop and now ....

Well I took it into the body shop and was greeted with the request of "Is it an insurance claim?" We asked why and were told anything older than 2000 with body issues is an automatic right-off. Gee thanks!

We then went and looked at the damage. They agreed it was a slight bump but with interesting consequences. They estimated $800 but suggested I did not need to do that because for the money they would do the following:
1) Remove the door
2) Loosen the hinge to body bolts
3) Place a strategically choice lump of wood against hinge
4) Hit with a BIG hammer
5) Replace door to see if it fits
6) If not go back 1) until it does.

They were that up front about it. They also estimated two hours with two guys.

Before I start this process - is there any advice besides keeping my fingers out of the way of the hammer

 

[spguest]

Got It Fixed

Well I went for the quick and cheap solution suggested by the body shop estimator. I went and bought some 5/16 fender washers. Then I carefully supported the door and marking the hinge positions. One hinge at a time I undid the 13mm bolts between the hinge and the door. In turn I slipped two washers between the door and the hinge and retightened the bolts.

I needed a little adjustment, with the help of a padded rubber hammer, to move the bottom corner out slightly because the door did move when I lifted it slightly to widen the gap for the bottom hinge . Now the door is working fine again.

Estimate for the use of the hammer and wood solution was $800 for a day in the shop where they know how to remove the door, know where to place the bit of wood, know how hard to hit it and how to rehang the door.

The fix was 15 minutes and $4 plus tax plus a trip to the Home Depot