my #5547 has brass door hinges. I removed the old paint and polished them. Looks nice against Lotus race green paint job.Also ran a strip of metal behind the hinge post and inside the door hinge wood to keep the thing a bit stronger.No door sag that way.
Well I tried to fit my new polished stainless steel ones last night. Seemingly mine are the older (let's call them slimline) version....found this on GoMoG:
Quote:
At some point in time the factory changed the hinges to a "thicker" version. The causes doors of a car originally fitted with the old hinges to foul on the latch plate when the new hinges are fitted. Sadly, the Factory has confirmed that only the new hinges are available.
The difference is in the bend round the pin which gives a larger gap between the plates in the closed position. With the doors closed if the gap between the plates is about 1 mm you have old hinges, about 3 mm is new hinges. I had 1mm machined off the back of the plates on both sides 35mm back from the outside edge. In hindsight 33mm would have been enough but you have to peer very closely to see the step. This solved the problem in my case but if necessary the latch plate position can be adjusted by removing the lining behind the door. The latch plate usually has washers behind it which can be removed as required.
The holes are the same but they "push" the door back about 3mm which means the latch clashes with the body work
Will now have another look tonight but think I may have to try and polish up my old ones.....
Well I had another look and the new hinges are thicker than my old ones and the pin/pin hole/pin surround is slightly larger in diameter too.
So I dismantled my old hinges, one was easy the other took quite some pounding with a heavy hammer and drift! Minor modifications were made to the pin before re-inserting and the spacer washers were renewed.
Once apart I stripped off the old paint and polished the up on the buffing wheel, initially to remove the rust and then to bring to a shine. They are not in perfect condition (probably from manufacture) but are pretty good once cleaned up.
Below are some photos:
Photo 1: Before Photo 2: Comparing to the polished stainless steel new ones Photo 3: The old ones all polished up and re-installed.
Sorry about the quality of the photos - used my phone.
In all about 4 hours work over a couple of days, to remove the old ones, install the new ones, strip and polish the old ones and then reinstall the old ones!
I've used the new stainless steel bolt set - looks quite smart.
Now for the other side, which look worse (probably as the driver side door gets more use!)...
I was quite disappointed when the new ones did not fit (or rather pushed the door back a bit too far) as I have long thought the hinges let the car down with their flaking paint/rust.
However I am very pleased how they have cleaned and polished up.
