The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Doors 1953 Door Hinge Bolts

morn everyone, my restoration of my 1953 chev 1/2 ton 5 window has hit a major snag, after getting the doors back from the glass shop I was looking at the captive fine thread nuts that hold the hinge in the door , I ran a fine thread bolt thru them to clean them up and when I got to the drivers door upper , it was gone ???? just three elongated holes, no backplate or captive bolts, my question is , what is the best fix ? cut into the door and weld in nuts ? weld in made up plate with tapped holes ? I have a donor door here that i could take that plate out , it looks like the bold pattern is the same for the top and bottom hinges, anyone have this problem and what did you do to fix it ?? I will post a couple pics later[img]http://[/img]

I cut the plate out of a donor door and after looking at it with a buddy we installed the plate with the one inner bolt to hold the plate in place , now to try and slide the door onto the hinge , It was better than having to cut into my painted door , door hanging day today !!!

You're going to have trouble keeping that plate in place while installing the hinge, as it will need that bolt at least loose to slide the hinge in place. I'd suggest that you drill a couple holes in the door panel where you've put the plate, but outside the depression for the hinge, and put a couple of plug welds there to hold it in place permanently. They should be covered by the door panel, so won't hurt your paint job.
If you just used the nut plate without the secondary sheet metal, you'll be depending on just the inner sheet metal skin to support the door, and it may eventually crack. I would highly recommend welding that inside sheet metal that holds the nut plate to the inner panel to give the assembly more support.