door hinge tension

[Nicholas Lewin]

Can I ask a doh! question...?

I have been doing hundreds of little jobs on my 240 by way of preventative maintenance including lubricating the door hinges

Could I have over-oiled the hinges? Is that possible? It's just that neither the passenger or driver's doors now stay open fully or halfway. Is this because I have over oiled them or coincidentally the tension provided by the vertical bar/spring has weakened?

How do you re-tension car door hinges?

[Bugjam1999]

Sounds like they were staying open as the hinges were stiff due to lack of oil, now you’ve oiled them and they aren’t stiff anymore the stays can’t hold the doors in the half-open or fully open positions.

It isn’t possible to over oil the hinges, unfortunately it isn’t possible to re-tension them either - my experience suggests it isn’t so much that the spring loses tension but that a groove gets worn in the spring meaning it doesn’t grip the other part of the hinge as well anymore.

The rear door hinges are the same and of course get used far less often. The solution is to buy a full set of hinges (top and bottom) from the rear doors of a scrap car and replace the front hinges in your car with them. With a bit of luck you can find the correct colour... there’s a guide in the how to section explaining how to replace hinges, it’s time consuming to adjust them after replacement but the actual job isn’t too hard.

Cheers

[Nicholas Lewin]

Thanks Bugjam - should have replied sooner

Our good friends at Lakes have some rear door hinges aside for me for my next visit... A job for next summer methinks

[Bugjam1999]

I replaced one on a friends drivers door recently in exactly 30mins, without rushing, not such a big job really.

Cheers