Removing The Door

[Guest Wiggs]

I did something really stupid, left the door slightly open when I reversed out of my garage and have bent it.

 

Anyway, after kicking and beating myself up for being so stupid, I am going to fix it. I have a replacement door, in the correct colour too, cost £40.

 

How do I get old door off though? There are three pins, the ones in the top and bottom hinges seem to have plastic caps on them and I believe they will knock out. The center strap though has something that sort of resembles a rivet, any ideas how I can remove that? The place I got the door from cheated, they cut through the part of the hinge that was attached to the car when they removed the door! Can I reuse these pins?

 

Any advice on how to get the glass out of the old door and in to the replacement door would also be a great help!

Edited October 8, 2003 by Wiggs

[Guest PacMan]

The easiest way to replace the door is undo the four bolts that go into the door through the door hinge, and just bolt the new door onto the existing complete hinges.

 

If you are insistent on doing it via the door pins then they will either hammer out with a punch or if its a later car, they have a torx fitting or so i am led to believe. I'm sure you could reuse them, but new ones only cost a few quid form a Pug dealer.

[Guest Wiggs]

I did think about that method too, unbolting the hinges, but I didn't think that there would be much space to do this and the bolts have been painted over, so I wasn't sure how easy or difficult it would be to get them to move. I will give it a go, nothing to loose!

 

The only reason I was choosing the pin removal method was due to the Haynes manual suggesting it.

[Anthony 1,000]

I took the doors off the 205 that I'm breaking at the weekend, and I punched out the pin for the door open stop bar thing, and undid the four nuts on the inside of the door that hold the hinge on - took about 5 minutes per door.

 

Once you've removed the window motors (or at least disconnected them from the window glass), the windows should lift out if you tilt them facing outwards a little. You'll need to dislodge the seal as otherwise this will foul on the metal bracket on the base of the window.

 

Obviously before you consider undoing the hinges and removing the door, you'll need to extract the cabling from the door - the cabling is clipped along the inside bottom of the door, and has connections for speakers, central locking, window motors, and window switches which you'll need to unplug first of all. Extract the cabling out of the hinge end of the door, and feed it all back into the new door.

 

You'll also need to swap over the door lock, electric window motors and central locking solenoid (if fitted of course)

 

Shouldn't be too difficult to do - about an hour or two to swap the doors from start to finish I reckon

[Guest PacMan]

Oops, yeah i forgot about that pin in the doorstay, mainly because my door doesn't have one!!

[Guest Wiggs]

Thanks Anthony. I assume the pin for the door stay, looking at it, can't be reused, is that correct?

 

As I said before, looks a bit like a rivet, it bulges out, so it's wider at the top and bottom of the hole and wont fit through the hole (which is obviously a good thing!). So I'm guessing it probably needs squashing back into it's original form to fall out of the hole? I hope this makes some kind of sense! I can't take any pictures right now.

[Guest Al-2]

Don't bother with the hinge pin unless it's nackered anyway, go straight for the bolts. It's not too tricky.

[sleeper205 0]

yeah, just do the 2 torx bolts.

 

they're T40 size, iirc.

[Guest Wiggs]

Did it... I'm very pleased with myself! Took about four hours in all, that includes transferring all the door trim, locks, central locking, electric window mechanism, wing mirror, glass, wiring loom, speaker and exterior trim. Also, straightening out the hinges on the body of the car.

 

I was amazed that the bolts that hold the door on just came undone so easily, they were painted over, so I assumed they'd be stuck. The only real pain was the pin for the door stay, took a lot of bashing to get that to move.

 

I think it needs a little adjustment, as I think the door is a little too high on the latch, but it closes perfectly, the damaged door didn't even shut. Now all I've got to do is T cut the car, as it's a faded red and the replacement door isn't so faded!

 

Thanks for the advice, I think it was much easier than Haynes suggested.