Front Door Hinge stability ?

I can't be the only person with this issue:

The set of front doors that came on my 69 van had the area around the bottom hinge bolts almost completely cracked away.....I bought a second set of doors and they were the same way.....

Upon further examination, I noticed that, although nothing is making contact, there seems to be a spot in the arc where the hinges don't want to come around any farther, so the door does the rest of it's inward travel by flexing the part of the door that the hinges bolt to. You can see it as movement of the hinges, front-to-rear, where they go into the openings in the door....
I've had the hinges off for inspection and it appears that they are capable of going that extra distance.....
One thing I am going to do is make a top-to-bottom 3/16" plate to stiffen the front of the door, but it isn't going to help much if I cant solve this geometry issue...

The set of hinges on the van are nice and tight (don't need re-bushed), so I'm not anxious to use any heat to re-shape them that might melt the bushings....

You should be able to shim the hinge to prevent it from binding. How is the gap at the rear of the door?

The stock travel stops were causing a lot of the bind.... now they aren't! (removed them)…. The spot at the bottom of the door where the hinge is bolted just seems to be too flimsy and weak to hold the door up properly when it's open..... Lifting the door into the latch to close it flexes the bottom hinge mount on the door, probably to where it is supposed to be.....The door skin and the spotted-in inner structural piece together are not even 1/8" and it allows too much flex.....I'm making up some "bolt plates" to add on the outside of the outer door skin that the hinges bolt through..... My prototype (pattern) is 1/8" thick, but I'm thinking of making them 1/4" instead and I've got a couple of ideas that will allow the bottom hinge to be pulled in tighter by the bolts, giving the bottom of the door extra lift....
I'm beginning to wonder if the rubber grommet around the hinge was designed as a means of using the door skin to locate and stabilize the hinge (?) which would be pretty tough on mine since the door skin is torn and beat back in those openings.....Maybe those openings need some kind of a billet locating trim ring around the hinge that screws to the body ahead of the pocket....


I'm also going to make some limiting straps from seatbelt material....

Sounds like you have a pretty good plan in place. I’d love to hear how you do the limiting straps as mine has none right now. How do you plan to sew them? Do you have a heavy duty sewing machine?

I'm lower tech than that.... I thought I'd roll the strap around a piece of aluminum flat bar a couple of times that has two bolts through it with another piece of aluminum flat bar sandwiched over the top..... at each end of the strap...… I'd have the one end screwed into the inside face of the door and the other end around the front side of the door pillar...