It's been a while, so I thought I'd provide a quick update. I've been hard at it in the garage, paying a penance for something, although I do not know what. I decided to take a "quick" break from the sheet metal work and work on the passenger side lower door hinge. I thought it would be a good change of pace...you know, break things up a bit and stay fresh. To my self defense, the tech tip made it sound like it wasn't that difficult of a job. I'm calling that impression bogus right now. What a miserable job that was and I'm only done with the disassembly! The tech tip states that the pins are not hardened steel. I disagree. The hacksaw would hardly scratch it, so I moved onto the Dremel with the thinnest cut off wheel, which did fit between the hinge parts. Once the pin was cut, it was still a challenge to get the hinge parts separated. Then, the "fun" began....
I ground off the head of the pin and attempted to use a punch to dislodge the top part of the pin from the hinge. Ended up calling "no joy" on that. Decided to drill it out a little and see if I could relieve some of the pressure on the pin. Came back to the punch and wham, out falls the pin...with the spacer still attached. Beauty. Set the spacer on the vice, hit the pin with the punch and out it fell. You've got to be kidding me. It couldn't fall out with the spacer attached to the hinge??? Nope. Guess I'll be welding that back on....
Onto the arm that attaches the door and removing that piece of the pin. Long story short: punch doesn't work, drill bit breaks off in the pin, destroy multiple drill bits trying to dislodge the broken bit, days go by. Finally, the tiny piece of drill bit gets dislodged and I can actually work on drilling out the remainder of the pin. OY!
Where I'm at now: ordered a replacement pin. You read that right, one pin. I'm never doing that again. Ever. Don't care about the shape of the other hinges. One and done. While waiting on delivery of the pin, I'll break out the sandblaster and clean up the hinge parts. Drill out the parts to the final, oversize dimension. Then weld the spacer back in place. Then prime and paint. Then reassemble the hinge. Lesson learned. At least the hinge looks to be rebuildable. I'd hate to have to replace it with a re-pop. They are expensive!
I'll add pics when i'm done with the rebuild. Without a doubt, this was the most unpleasant task that I've attempted while working on my truck. Buyer beware! I know some of you are thinking that I'm a poor machinist. In reality, I'm no machinist at all. That likely played a role in my troubles. Is what it is. Now, off to the garage to clean up the mess. There are metal shavings everywhere and lots of cutting oil to clean up....
One last thought. My above rant doesn't mean anything other than I wasn't up to the task at hand. The above is the story of a noob struggling. In my opening post, I committed to being brutally honest and this was posted in that spirit. I'll keep trying. Hopefully, you'll keep reading and responding. Please keep the comments, suggestions and advice coming. I do appreciate them all.
