Door Rebulid
The rebuild of the doors will be one of the most time consuming tasks of the entire project. It could be done much faster but to get them fabricated correctly, this is the only way to do it. These need to be done right, no corner cutting here!
All the doors are being rebuilt out of aluminum. The doors on these trucks are always a problem area. Due to the extreme weight of the doors, the hinges sag over time and the doors don't fit right. The steel doors also rust out because of paint damage because of the sagging.
The outside skins will be made of 1/8" 5052 marine grade aluminum plate to help prevent corrosion. The frames will be made of 6061 industrial grade 1 1/4" solid bar. The inner skins will be made of 1/4" 6061 industrial grade plate for strength against high SPL levels. The doors will be lined with Bullet Resistant fiberglass panels to make the doors remain bulletproof.
The new door frames will be bolted together with 3/8-16 & 1/4-20 stainless steel hardware & 1/4" 6061 aluminum corner brackets instead of welding like the originals. This will allow the frames to be adjusted if needed or easily repaired should they get damaged. The 3/8-16 stainless steel carriage bolts that will connect the outside door skins to the frames will give the doors a more industial look, which is what I am after.
The new door skins will need to be re-enforced in the door hinge mounting locations to prevent flexing. There will be 3 brackets fabricated out of 1/4" hardened steel plate for each door...15 total. All the mounting holes will need to be squared out in order to allow the carriage bolts to seat correctly.
Fabricating the door hinge re-enforcement brackets.
Squaring out the holes.
Fabricating the new doors.
New rear door skins.
New drivers side rear door being built.
New passengers side rear door being built.
Rear doors are finished!
New passengers side, side door skin.
New passengers side, side door being built.
Exact copy of the original door frame...not quite strong enough.
A few more frame bars should do the trick! That's more like it!
New drivers side door skin.
New passengers side door skin.
As you can see from the pictures, the original door frames were poorly built. The new frames will also be much stronger than these.
Door Installation.
Trying to get the doors to fit the body correctly is going to be a near impossible task, but with many hours of adjustments & trimming they should be very close to perfect.
Installing the rear doors.
Driver Side Front Door.
The original front doors were in better shape than what we originally thought so we decided to just refurbish them instead of rebuilding them out of aluminum as we had planned.
The original hinges needed to be replaced because they were worn out. These were welded to the truck body and the door skin an needed to be cut off.
Cutting the door off the truck.
Now the the door has been removed from the truck, the hinge straps needed to be cut off the door skin & the hinge butts cut off the truck body.
Cutting off the hinges.
After test fitting the door in the opening, it didn't fit right...this is the way it was right from the factory...wrong just like everything else. Both side edges needed to be cut down to get it to fit correctly.
Cutting the door edges.
Page 1...Overview
Page 2...Floor Rebuild & Interior
Page 3...Roof Raising & Rebuild & Wall Rebuild
Page 4...Bumper Rebuild
Page 5...Rear Fenderwell Rebuild
Page 6...You Are Here