Rebuilding a C-series Front Door: of Wind, Water, Plastic and Panic

[Gunfighter97]

In other news, RAIN! It's everywhere!
Its in the sky!
It IS the sky!
It's falling out of the sky!
The sky is falling!
It's on the ground!
It's in my hair!
It's in my shoe's!
It's even in the Sunday sermon!

What is this thing called rain?

Whatever it is, it's also inside the cab of my C-series!!!

But let's rewind, for just a second. Context is kinda important here. Anyone who's read my threads knows I am a master of achieving maximum project bloat. About six days ago, I was about to add to it via a quick rebuild on a PNP driver door to attach to Sherman (1965 D1100 4x4) for the winter while I repair the existing dismantled driver door. But I thought, nahhh, rain is just an old legend. Even if rain actually exists, I've got this great waterproof tent I've been working in for years. And thus I went against my natural way, and am now suffering for it. . . and me and my twisted sense of humor actually find it kinda funny.

So, this just happened:

About twenty minutes before this happened it was still mostly a tent, however it was very clearly NOT water proof anymore. It had also ripped a 12" ring stake out of the ground by the rope and bent it in half winding up three feet farther to one side. Wind was raging, and like a tornado to an RV park, was the magnetic attraction of abnormally high winds to my garage tent. So a mad dash was made to kick the expensive BMW out of the garage in favor of boxes full of old rusty parts. Safe to say I got my engine gasket set out of there just in time. And about ten minutes later the door in the background appeared inside with these parts:

This will (probably) be a basic disassembly/reassembly tutorial. It may also turn into a full rebuild depending on how much I like this door.

First up! Off with the door card and a homeless ID plate that I don't have the truck for:

Judging from the looks of this plate, and the fact that this door was in the bed of a truck at PNP that had both doors, I'd say this isn't its original home. Stand by for more mayhem. . .

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[Gunfighter97]

Step one for disassembly:
the drain panels four screws are removed allowing it to slide out.

Next, the door lock is removed by removing this retaining clip located below the latch, behind the weather stripping. To remove, grab with pliers, pull evenly toward the door skin and then out. It will not come all the way out:

This allows for removal of the lock which in turn frees the retaining clip:

Next, remove this screw:

Followed by these two screws:

These are usually full of debris, stripped, or conveniently already snapped off(usually a combination of the former two). Clean inside the screw heads thoroughly and rinse with degreaser. Penetrating oil soak may help, but you want to hit it inside in advance by a long time. Im not that patient; I'll give it an honest try with the screw driver, but otherwise enter vise grips and crescent wrench:

This takes the screws off cleanly EVERY time. Note there is a difference between off and out . Once these steps are done we can try and remove the front sliding chanel. When grabbing it and wiggling, do not ignore the foreboding buzzing noise. Prepare yourself for hell to let loose(note staged weapon, bottom right):

Since the trac wont come out, use the crescent wrench to raise the glass. This will release hell. You should then run. Preferably not into the house, but outside where it's raining.


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[Darrel]

Heck of a storm. At least the truck is ok!

 

[Gunfighter97]

Heck of a storm. At least the truck is ok!

Lol you didn't see the water pour out when I opened the door! Disassembly is done, just need to type it up. Also looking at the actual desktop website for a change. . . are my pics always this scattered around?

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[Gunfighter97]

Once you have raised the horde, you must raze the horde. And after eliminating any remaining baddies

Work is resumed. The front felt track is still secured to the front structural track via this tiny screw and nut:

Grabbing the nut with pliers and loosening gives enough room for it to turn freely via screw driver from inside the felt trac. However, no matter how much pressure I put in it, I couldn't keep it from stripping out. So out came the dremel cutoff wheel and bye bye went the screw. Once the screw is deleted the structural track can be separated from the felt via a sharp pick or screw driver and the bottom of the support pushed forward:

Once the bottom is pushed forward, pull down; the top will then go forward, then lift up and pull the bottom rearward, then the entire thing should come out. Once that's done, lower the glass and pop off the regulator arms retaining clip. It is round, so find the gap visible next to the pliers here:

Then push it toward the other side and it will come off in your hand.

Next, pull the arm out of the track and raise it with the mech till it stops. Remove these screws with a hand to catch the regulator on the last one:

Once you have one screw left, look through the upper hinge access hole and lower the regulator arm till the gear clears the slot. Remove the last screw and the mech will come out(this mech looks nice, so I will do a little work and reuse it over the original in Sherman):

Theoretically following the shop manual you can remove the glass before you remove the regulator. I've tried this a hundred ways to sunday and I can't get their technique to work. So I remove the glass LAST just before the latch mech and outer handle. Just be careful if you do it this way, and be sure to remove any inward facing screws from the mirrors.

More to follow. . .

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[Gunfighter97]

Next the seal is started out of its track in the wing window. Three of the mounting screws are removed; I leave the fourth in at the top at this point.

The hinge pin at the top must drop fully into the window frame for the frame to slide free, but first, remove this screw:

The top window felt is then pulled free of the retainers, which are squeezed together and plucked out.

The rear felt track has one screw at the very bottom inside the door shell, but mine was missing. Once its removed the rear felt should slide up and down. Next, pop loose the glass wipers:

And then the rear felt will tilt forward and pull out through the window.

The wing windows last screw is removed and with the window open, the upright can be thumped rearward to break it loose. Once it tips back from the top, it lifts out:

Now the main glass can be lifted out the way it rolls up, tilted and pulled free:

The glass in this door looks perfect, so another for sure replacement added to the list. Finally these two screws and then the ones around the latch, then the whole thing pulls out:

This is one part I will also be reusing as Sherman's was missing in favor of a crudely welded in replacement from the wrong vehicle. Seems tapa talk is mad at me so looks like I'll be back in the old browser again. Stand by for the last part. . .


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[Gunfighter97]

Lastly, the outer door handle is removed via one nut inside the door shell here:

And one screw here:

All I have left now is a piece of late 60s trim that is in pretty nice shape. I'll be passing this on either to someone local or trading it at IHPA, and I'll also make note of the hole locations for it and post a map them here. How do I get this off without damaging it? This part is newer/beyond the scope of my truck.

 

[Gunfighter97]

Holy picture quality Batman! Is everyone's CPUs alright? It took my laptop like five minutes to load the last post LOL i knew tapa dumbed down resolution but I didn't think it was that much.

 

[Gunfighter97]

Today began some cleaning, removal of the old weather stripping and the aluminum trim. Here are the hole layout measurements:

Driver door, so the front of the door is to the left. Left to right is front to back. They are evenly spaced from the bottom of the door(tape hooked at the bottom and pulled tight across the curve):

The trim piece turned out to be pretty nice, so it will appear for sale somewhere once I have time for that.

 

[Gunfighter97]

The mornings damage control:

took about five minutes to drain. I'm experimenting with file upload, so this post will be a guinea pig for a bit. . .
oh noooo, my paint got scratched

 

[Gunfighter97]

Alrighty. I have a new trick for pictures that I believe uploads directly eliminating the need for the host site I'm using to move pics between my phone and PC. If something goes wrong with the pics it will be fixed shortly.

This morning after cleaning up the collapsed tent, I went to work on cleaning up the bare shell. First up I removed the majority of three layers of adhesive backed weather seal. I removed what's left with a combination of brakleen, wire brushes and a putty knife. Once the majority was gone I began carefully going over the shell, looking for pitting and scale. my biggest concern aside from the area I'll talk about next, were these holes drilled for a mirror:

the area turned out to be very cleanly cut and relatively rust free inside the frame, so I may use these for the next mirrors if I do swap shells.
Next I turned my attention to the lower door hinge adjustment bolt access area. This is easily the worst spot on the door. To probe the integrity of the metal, I use a sharp center punch, and chip away at anything that looks scaly or flakey. Once I cant get any more to chip away, and a scratch with the punch shows white metal, I give it a good tap based on the metal thickness. If it sounds solid, the metal can be covered over in bondo. In this case, the punch went through in several areas around the edges of the socket access holes, as well as in several locations well away from any edges. I will further evaluate this later.

The bottom of the door looked relatively solid at first glance, but after seeing the above I thought it best to explore it more closely even though the area shown above was in contrast to the relatively clean interior of the shell(post vacuuming of course).

I began by wire wheeling the rust off the bottom of the door and followed with an extra coarse steel hand brush in suspect areas. I then cleaned away the dust with some degreaser and did find some scale upon very close inspection in two places. The inside edge of the door bottom had a couple locations that I was able to flake some scale out of resulting in two pin holes that I will repair later. The outside edge, particularly where the seal was glued on didn't fare as well in the center area, but its still not terribly bad.

After picking scale out I did my integrity test at the bottoms of the larger pits, safe to say it had none. Here is the outside problem area with a colored light to see where the punch test failed:

the compromised area is maybe three to four inches in length, and not visible at any time of operation. I will repair it by drilling a 3/8" hole at either end, cutting the sides with a Dremel wheel and welding in a new piece. After performing more tests up and down the pitting, some scratch tests showed clean white metal, so the rest will smooth out with bondo at a later time. for now, it will all get Eastwood converter. Next post we will look at the shells remaining problems and after that, have a look at the interior components.

 

[Darrel]

That door isn't bad at all and that hinge area repair looks super easy. Too bad about the fender paint. When I saw your shredded tent I had visions of dents and busted glass.

 

[Gunfighter97]

Too bad about the fender paint.

Pics don't don't do this paint job justice. It's terrible LOL. It was done by a PO with a roll brush, and there's worse scrapes in it from me working on it. No dents, my glass did survive, didn't even think about that D: Also found out that not only did the tent lift the 2 gallon water bladder anchors at the corners in front, and rip that 12" loop stake out, it ripped out five of the eight total, 8" nails I forgot about that secured the bottom of each post at the foot. One got stabbed back into the ground right next to my new tire.


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[Gunfighter97]

Further evaluation of the door indicates a solid find. The remaining issues are to do with the lower hinge access area, which I realized has a snapped off bolt still residing there:

My strategy for this at present is to address it when I cut out the rotten area and have better access to it. The afore mentioned rotten area I will cut around and evaluate the surrounding metal before I get into radiuses. hopefully I can simply patch in a flat rectangle, or better yet, redesign the cover plate and mounting solution in a manner that allows for easy cleaning.
The only remaining problem is what I call sugar rust. Rust that looks about 10x as bad as it is. Loose flakey surface rust all over the front inside and under the bottom of the window area:

this pic shows two bondoed mirror screw holes. This door displayed evidence of being repainted:

The hinge mount frame viewed through the glass slot:

The upper hinge area looking upwards with illumination:

I'm wondering if I can submerse this section:

in evapo rust. The problem is I would need to rinse with water, and then I'm back to square one.

 

[Darrel]

Pics don't don't do this paint job justice. It's terrible LOL. It was done by a PO with a roll brush, and there's worse scrapes in it from me working on it. No dents, my glass did survive, didn't even think about that D: Also found out that not only did the tent lift the 2 gallon water bladder anchors at the corners in front, and rip that 12" loop stake out, it ripped out five of the eight total, 8" nails I forgot about that secured the bottom of each post at the foot. One got stabbed back into the ground right next to my new tire.


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That's the paint you want for offroading and hunting in ID.

 

[Gunfighter97]

That's the paint you want for offroading and hunting in ID.

May have to "color match" this door then

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[Gunfighter97]

Before evaluating pieces and parts I went and gathered the remains of my original door. The latch I do not have a comparison for because. . . Well, this:

Apart from this the doors were in comparable condition. The bottom and lower hinge area were about the same:

There is much more extensive surface rust inside the original door and in addition to the latch dilemma, I only have three or four unwanted holes in the new door vs literally fifteen different holes and a handful more that were bondoed over:

The area where the bottom mount screw is for the vent window is not very sturdy. I say this because of the cracking I've found on both original doors and comparable cracking on the new door as well. That will have to be fixed with a series of tack welds and ground down later on:

From the new door we see the remote mechanism and the latch itself. After a bit of cleanup to remove an appreciated, very thorough coating of old grease, they appear to be in great condition:

Next the front track support is gone over, I cleaned both with a wire brush, and inspected them for straightness. They're both straight, but the original part is much cleaner, especially around the joints where the pieces were spot welded and virtually no pitting overall:


For purposes of getting this door on the truck, and protecting the rollup glass, I will not be using my choice parts in some instances. This will allow me to prep those parts in advance, strip and repaint, ect. Once I actually do rust repair, dent repair, paint this door and install my new weather stripping and felt, I will go through the remaining components and install the other choice parts. Next I went over the regulators in a similar fashion. The obvious winner was from the donor door, and because of the bent off track in the window of my original door, I have no idea if that regulator even works. The pics show evidence of a large crack in the main stamping, as well as scattered pitting in addition to whatever the heck somebody did to where the handle attaches:

As if to add insult to injury, I just noticed the originals spring isn't wound all the way. . . DADGUMIT PO! LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE!
Next up I'll go over the wing window, rollup glass, and lay out a plan regarding the remaining bits and pieces. . .

PICTURE REPAIR EDIT: Due to the way BP works, I am capped on file quantity (no idea how I managed this many the first time) and have no way to insert these last four pics of this post here or between posts (unless mods want to get involved?) these pics are safe and sound if anyone needs nerdy levels of info on the regulator assembly. I hope to play around with figuring out a rebuild kit for these sooner or later. That will likely get made into its own thread or added here when I attack this door again
(as soon as I find a place to in again).

 

[Gunfighter97]

first up comparing glass, pictured below you can see the cracked original vs the one from the new door and what the edge of the glass is supposed to look like vs one that's delaminating:

I may have gotten a little carried away cleaning the new glass lol. Next up, Vent window frames. The original is perfect while the one from this door is rusted, so another easy choice:

Likewise, the original galss was much better than the one in this door, not because of the glass itself, although it did have one small chip in the edge, but because of this fairly serious problem that IDK how to solve:

In addition, the pivot pin at the bottom, like the frame, was badly rusted:

Now going over both door shells, I no longer have a desire to try and fix the original. My only regret in this whole process is that I sold the passenger door I had from the PNP truck. Darn mirror holes! That latch area makes it too far gone. So of the two doors for the final result between the donor and the original, I will be using almost the entire donor door other than my original vent window and track support. For now I'm going to reuse the felt and clips from the donor. Once this project moves indoors (No pun intended) I will pull it back apart and nuke it like I have been everything else. As noted previously I will assemble it with a couple place holder parts for now, so I can nuke the parts I'll use in the finished door in advance.

For now I'm curious if you guys have any good tricks to scrub the surface rust out of the inside of the door that doesn't involve commercial dipping. on a side note I completely forgot about this sites great emoji collection

 

[stroker3]

No help with the rust but , IF you haven't thought of it already, there was small changes in the latch's during the last year or two of the c series. I know your original was butchered but the 68 latch you showed will need the same style/year catch.

 

[Gunfighter97]

No help with the rust but , IF you haven't thought of it already, there was small changes in the latch's during the last year or two of the c series. I know your original was butchered but the 68 latch you showed will need the same style/year catch.

Good point, I did forget about that. I do have a couple different strikers that were in the truck under the seat. . . and sitting here thinking I may actually have another latch somewhere. Not sure if its a passenger or driver side.

On rust, I did order up some gel evaporust to try, I will have to rinse with water, but I think if I dry it thoroughly with an air hose it wont have time/temperature variation enough to flash rust quickly like that time when I set some brackets in the sun after rinse lol. We'll see. Amazon prime should have that here today, so in the mean time I'll go dig up some of my other part stashes.



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