9am. It's a brisk 36F outside, a frozen layer of dew coats my driver's side door but it's warming up. I begin the operation.
I start with the roller spring catch arm since it's the one that comes with a "good luck" from Cunningham Machine and I assume I'm gonna lose time here. Well, I sure did.
I assumed I needed to grind the head off, hard to tell if it's press fit on there or what, but I gave it the zzzzt until it was level with the hinge and started pounding it with a punch. No go. Blowtorch didnt help. I tried pressing it out but it was levering hard on the arm itself so my forces weren't going where I wanted. 90 minutes goes by and I've essentially done nothing. I bail on this part of the operation, I'll try again when the door is off and I have more room.
I hook up the prepped lift and jack, the system works well:
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I knocked the previously field repaired roller pin out, the new one bolts in easy. I didn't realize the OD of the bushings are different sizes top and bottom and bent my install tool bolt (buy the tool, you don't need it but just do it) a little trying to put a big bushing in a small hole. I didn't go too far though, and figured it out before it was too late.
I decided the only way the catch arm was coming out was with a press, so I chopped the arm part off with the hackzall so the whole assembly fit through the hole in my ball joint c-clamp press. I then chopped the head off a phillips bit to use as a pressing dowel. It worked pretty well, there was enough force on the bit to gouge through the hinge steel when it shot sideways into the next county. Didn't budge the pin though.
At this point I spent another 15 minutes drilling it, but eventually had to hang that up too because I'm on a limited time budget. This is where I left it:
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Fail, but I don't need the door to hold open as bad as I need it to close easily. So I plop the door back on and the rest of the operation goes smoothly. The jack and hoist combo was good, it was easy to manipulate the door in free space by myself. I gave the door a test:
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Very nice. But I had one more problem: the door was smacking into the fender when I opened it. I think the door was drooping so bad that it started bending the fender. No worries, I used my professional bodyworking equipment:
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And fixed that right up with some precision bendalization. Everything is nice and smooth now, mission success.
