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REAR DOOR MECHANISM

My plan was to try and use as much of the stock mechanism as I possibly could. For the LH door I figured that I could use the lower latch and remove the upper portion (since there would eventually not be a roof for the upper latch to engage). I mounted the lower catch on the lower door threshold. I bought a rubber stop to mount to lower portion of the door to keep the door from over-rotating and clanging between the catch and door sill.

For the RH door I really couldn't find a way to use the stock door latch so I had to come up with a different mechanism. I created a lower U-bolt that mounted to the RH lower door that would protrude thru a hole I cut in the lower bed lip and engage a small bear claw latch that mounts under the bed. The latch was attached to a slotted bracket so I can dial in the fore/aft location and adjust the door gaps. I framed the cutout in the tub with a piece of stainless sheet that I had laying around.

Under the bed I used a shoulder bolt attached to a threaded bung welded into the rear substructure to create a mount for a pivot arm with a lever so that the clawlatch could be operated by reaching under the bumper (much like some of the hood latches on other vehicles). I'm not really happy with the handle of the latch so I will rework that eventually.

Once I had both door secured along the bottom, I had to figure out a way to secure the upper half of the doors. Since there wasn't anything to latch to for the upper half I decided to just tie the two doors together at the top. I want to prevent flexing and rattling due to air load and buffeting while driving at highway speeds. I wanted something simple that might look fairly stock for the era of truck so I settled on fabbing a gun bolt type of latch.

So I procured some steel DOM tubing and some solid stainless round stock that slip-fit inside of the tubing and built a sliding gun latch with a black plastic knob as a handle and mounted it sunk approx halfway into the door inner surface. The latch is spring-loaded to remain closed/locked. To open the doors you simply slide the gun latch open (and rotate it to hold it in the open position) and then reach under the rear bumper and pop the bear claw latch to open the RH door. Once the RH door is open then the stock (but relocated) lever on the RH door can be popped to open the RH door.

It works surprisingly well. Now the mechanism will just need some clean-up (welding, grinding, polishing) prior to plating or powdercoating.