Door adjustment

Has anyone tried bending the hinges to adjust the gaps? That was the recommendation of a bodyman. You'd obviously have to use a torch to heat the metal but that would ensure it would bend where you want it to. Then, which part to bend? The one that's already curved, I would think.

I thought for sure there'd be a way to shim them but there ain't.

This is very common. I see it on most of the early Chevy vans. Does anyone have one with cargo door gaps that ARE even?

Good luck with that. I'm not much help past using shimms. Dense plastic is good as it doesn't hold water. My rears have something over a half inch gap. Seems to be so normal with our van I wonder if it's just that wa from the factory--nobody sold these for van shows. Still closes and locks okay so I'm not motivated to fix. Nonetheless, please report what did work for you. Thanks much!

Measure your door jambs for squareness first. Measure your doors for squareness too.

I had to use a ram on a door jamb to close a gap.

Bending the hinge might help , but you would have to stretch or shrink the curved part (re-radius it). If I was going to be that fussy I'd probably rework the edges of the doors themselves if they latched and sealed okay.

Inspect, inspect & Inspect = the doors where hinges bolt in. possibly-?? wind or an accident has bent the hinge mount areas inside the door ?? Being in the body work for some time in my past life ive never had to bend a hinge. Ever!Always was another problem that wasnt forseen.

On my rear doors I had to ad a strip of 1/8" to gap. 3/16th at top and wider (3/8") on bottom to get a good 1/8" all around both doors. Looks better then factory now.

The end results are a good straight gap.

[i]Good Fix - nice results!! Thats usually the ways.

I think I figured out the cause of this gap! I was looking at my rear doors. The gap is so big that the latch doesn't even reach the "striker" on the other door!

I bet most people are like me and removed the straps that keep the doors from opening all the way up. They're not needed, right, because the hinges have a built-in stop that keeps the door from hitting the van.



So, you know the old trick of adjusting a door by closing it against a block of wood in the hinge area? Hinges are tough steel but this trick works because you've got the leverage of the door's width to help you bend things. Well what do you think is happening every time we open a cargo door all the way and it hits that stop?! Same thing. A lot of leverage being applied to the hinges!

Go out and push a door against the stop. Just by pushing with one hand you can see the force being applied to those two hinges and the door frame they are bolted to. So picture 45 years of this, along with the occasional door-catches-the-wind like TwinPilot said. And never is any force applied in the opposite direction.

So here's what I'm going to try: I'm guessing that the 1/4" thick steel hinge didn't bend, it's the thin steel of the body that it bolts to. Take apart a spare hinge and take the straight part (that attached to the body) and weld it to a nice long steel bar. Now it can be bolted in place and it should be easy to "encourage" the mount back to its original angle. Undo the years of impacts by pushing back the other way. It would take a lot of time removing the tool and testing the door, but I am convinced this is the way to fix this problem.

What do you think?!

I should mention, I've got a whole set of rebuilt hinges that will be swapped out during the body work phase. You can see how worn out the hinge is in this photo. I will test the fit with the new hinges before proceeding with my plan.

As someone we both know would say,"Sounds like a plan" . Keep us posted on the results.

Yeah . If I'm understanding it right it very well might be a big help. I dont know if you would have to go as far as welding it to anything a really heavy duty vise might also work for it. Your just trying to move the pin in towards the center of the van a bit right?

Right, Digz, the pins on my doors have moved too far apart from each other. Either the hinges have bent or the metal frame has bent (or a little of both). The body man's idea of bending the hinges would do the trick, and you could do it in a vise maybe with help from some heat. But what I like about doing it right on the vehicle is that it lets the metal parts decide for themself which will bend, since the force will be applied the same way, just in the opposite direction.

Hey, we don't need to take a hinge apart to do this. If it is really the door frame that is bent, just bolt on the old hinge from the opposite door! Its stop will catch while rotating in the opposite direction. And instead of welding, we could just bolt something strong to the curved part of the hinge, using its threaded holes. You could even use an old door and work on both upper and lower hinges at the same time!

It would be interesting to get the measurement between the two pins from a van that has nice type gaps like Chester's. Should be able to get an accurate measurement from the pointy end of the pins. When I compare that to my measurement, the difference should be my unwanted extra gap. 

Although I must admit, Chester, I didn't really understand what your numbers meant. We're they thicknesses of shims? Or did you actually add metal to the doors?

Vanagain, I actualy welded the 1/8 steel strip to the door and then cut it to get the 1/8" gap all around both doors . The hindges are not bent, my gap at hindge side were good. I think maybe they left the factory that way. Factory's then didn't hold the gaps like they do today with a robot doing the work. QC is much tighter today.
Will try to find a foto of the set up after setting the doors up.
Lester

anyone have a pic of the hinges from inside? my van is panneled and i always assumed i could just shim the hinges. my side door isnt evan close, and would like a better idea as to how theyre attached. hard to believe there is no adjustment. chesters way seams extreme but they did end up perfect.

Here's a quick photo for you looking down into the lower hinge mount of the side lefthand cargo door. Sorry for the bad focus. In this shot, the bolts go in from the right. You can see one of the welded-in nuts on the left. Most of the metal is the thickness of the body but the reinforcement piece (with the nuts) is thicker. That one seems quite solid but you can see the one the bolts first go through is quite bent.



I've got the perfect cut-up parts to show how these work. I'll take some better photos and I'll post a video later showing me applying force to them.

Here's a better shot. I've put the hinge in from the opposite side. Now I'm not so sure about my idea about applying pressure the opposite way. Seems it's just going to push the thinner plate out (by the end of the hinge). It won't unbend the already bent parts. Might just make it sloppier. Now I'm thinking maybe a wedge-shaped shim could be inserted between the thin plate and the hinge to push the hinge more towards the door opening.

thanks for pics. now i understand why you need to bend hinge or metal holding it. i am thinking p.o. had it apart and mixed up the hinges. the top hinge is to far towards other door causing door to overlap the rocker. you would thing years of opening too far would bend hinge the other way

I did try to tack weld a shim to the near inside to move the doors to the center,but was not enough to close the gap. Tried to bend the leaf that goes into the frame but no go with out heating red hot, but that would take the tamper out of the material and make it bend in the futuremore easily. So I took the long way and never regreted it. Just my experience.

VANagain wrote:

To me, I think that the piece of the sandwich that is bent ss the door opening, noticing the separation between the exterior and hinge plate assembly, and the warping along the length of the hinge plate sandwich. I don't know if putting a wedge to flatten out the part next to the actual hinge is the answer.

If you measure corner to corner of your door jambs and various points horizontally, I would suggest that most of our vans are not square anymore, particularly when you consider the force of wind whipping our doors open... now that I think of it a little more, it is most likely that the door jambs have been twisted over time in the directions the doors open.

The perfect tool? Imagine a come-along with hinge plates on the ends, or maybe somehow able to grip around the hinge pins with the doors in place. Give it a few cranks until the door gaps shrink, and then your door jambs are probably reoriented to how they came out of the factory instead of 50 years of wear and tear.

I'm in the same boat with the door gaps. My side doors have a 1/2 gap in the center between the doors. I was hoping when i rebuilt the hinges this would help(no luck) I think vanagain might be on to something with building a tool to bend the hinge pocket back to where it was from the factory. Bob

We'll spent the day in the shop working on the 64. I have a solution to fix the door gaps. I pulled the hinge of the van and put the hinge in my shop press and bent the hinge just a little bit. Then I installed the hinge back on, then repeat the process. Not the quickest way but works. My side doors where really bad and now they are acceptable. Hopefully I can post of a picture to show how this works. I need to bend the rear hinges thursday Bob

is there any adjustment up and down or in and out? bending hinge should make gap correct and raise door slightly but i think it would still need lifted slightly and top of door is sunk in too far.

Im pretty sure the holes the bolt passes thru are oversized and allow some movement in those ways. The bolts thread into the hinge itself. Looking at that cut away pick , there are a couple things going on. One is the sheetmetal the hinge actually bolts to is bowed. second, it has the sides of the rib flaring out helping to hold it that way. If you manage to push the one area back to flat , you would also have to bend the edges of the rib back into position to hold it.

good, if they arent bigger now, they will be when i am done.