Beck TD, Part 58: Those Suicidal Doors

Way back in December of 2017, Part 14 of this saga told of my efforts to repair several problems with Beck's "suicide" doors - so-called because they open swinging from the rear. If they open when  you're driving, they are ALL the way open in a heartbeat, and if you aren't belted in, out you go! That actually happened to my cousin Joyce when we were little kids. We were all riding in the back seat of her Mom's car, and Joyce leaned against the door handle and opened the door as we were going around a slow right-angle in a parking lot. She tumbled out, but fortunately wasn't even skinned up much.

In Part 14, I thought I had adjusted the door latches so that both the primary and secondary latches would catch, but I made a tactical error: I did the adjustment while the car was on the lift. When I put it on the ground, everything shifted and both doors would only engage the primary latch. I tempted fate and drove it that way for a couple of summers, but I needed to fix it.


One problem was extreme wear at the hinges, which are unlike any modern car. They stick out from the body like this (circled):

There was enough wear on the driver's side that you could move the door up and down about half an inch. Any rational restorer with a budget would have bought the Moss Motors 402-018 door hinge set for $290 and be done (photo courtesy of Moss Motors):

However, I'm both irrational and cheap, so I decided I needed to try to restore the hinges first. Troy Nace was helping on that day, and we removed the driver's door with great effort, since the 68-year-old hardware was rusty and stuck. In fact, the top hinge had a wood screw that was absolutely welded in place. It broke when I tried to remove it, and it took a lot of effort to get it drilled out and the wood frame in the bodywork restored to hold it.

After getting the top hinge apart, It was obvious that the steel pin was fine, as was the center knuckle in the hinge. All the wear was in the two knuckles of the part that bolted to the body. I started by using the lathe to make a precisely sized piece to sleeve the hole:

I bonded it in place with adhesive. I tried three different ones until I found one that would hold - plain old Super glue from Loctite.

After that, it was just drilling, reaming, cutting and filing, and then the hinge plate was precisely bushed to fit. You can barely see the outline of the bushing in the photo below:

I reassembled that hinge, and it was nice and tight - ready to go. I confidently started on the lower hinge. However, it was obvious that it was bent. I can't even imagine how, unless all those years of wear slowly tweaked it out of shape. A bench vise wouldn't budge it, but several presses on the 20-ton press got the mounting plate flat:

Unfortunately, there was a crack in the plate, and the knuckles didn't realign correctly. I tried to bush it, found it inadequate, tried again, and it finally gave up the ghost:

Oh, well - I had fixed one of two anyway. I spent $90 to get a new lower hinge delivered.

While I was working on hinges, I asked Troy to try to duplicate the Moss 401-170 door lock shim, which looks like this:

That shim is only 1/16" thick and costs about 8 bucks. From previous measurements, I knew I'd need several, so Troy made a prototype out of 1/8" aluminum:

It worked well on the passenger door, but Troy told me he needed a bit more shim action. I later set the milling machine up and made several more:

Troy thought he only needed about 1/16" more on the passenger side, so I used the milling machine to whittle down a pair of rough scrap pieces to 1/16" thick, and then drilled them for the various holes before moving to the band saw to cut them out and create the notch.

So after all that effort, today Troy came by again and helped me reassemble everything. The only other thing that required some effort is that after the driver's door was all assembled and adjusted, adding the door panel caused a bind that would not allow the door to close and latch fully. I wasn't about to let that stop us now, so we removed staples from the upholstery, cut about 1/4" off the wooden door panel, and and re-stapled. Then it all worked great.

We reassembled the rest of the pieces (including the top, which had to be completely removed to remove the doors) and went for a test drive. It was the first time I've ever driven Beck TD with the top up!

This was so satisfying to accomplish. For the first time in my nearly three-year ownership of Beck, both doors engage the second safety latch. You could say I spent $90 on a hinge to get it done, but I prefer to say I saved $90 on the upper hinge, plus around $50 on shims that were made in-shop. All in good fun!

UPDATE: I subsequently removed the passenger door and was able to rebuild both hinges on that side.  The door now fits well and closes and latches easily and fully. Total savings: around $250!

Continue on to Part 59....