Door Hinge Pin Replacement.

[JonLow]

Any have any advice on replacing small Triumph door hinge pins? My door gaps are quite good, but the doors drop when opened, appears to be wear in the pivot pins. I have read in some of the American forums that various people have bought pins from the two big UK suppliers and found that they are not a good replacement, requiring a little of machining to get them to fit into the hinges. Various pins also offered on Ebay. 

Anyone replaced such door pivots? Any recommendations, or warnings, please?

 

[Pete Lewis]

one end is knurled/splined  to grip the hinge  hole   so they only exit one way 

Pete

[ed.h]

I found that the replacement pins were all slightly oversized, which might be OK, since some of the wear is to the bore.  The bores will still likely need drilling and/or reaming.  If the bores are too big, you can sleeve them.

Boring TR6 hinges:

http://bullfire.net/TR6/TR6-62/TR6-62.html

 

Sleeving GT6 hinges:

http://bullfire.net/GT6/GT6-40/GT6-40.html

Ed

[Pete Lewis]

ive tried ream oversize and use a long shank bolt 

not brilliant but better than worn 

Pete

[chrishawley]

This is a seemingly simple job: remove hinge from car, drift out existing pin with pin punch, press in new pin. Job done.

If only.

Where can it go wrong? 

1) Pin seized/broken/bent and won't drift out. Ends up needing to be drilled/machined out.

2) Pivots (holes) in door side of hinge are worn to ovality. So even with a new pin there's still markedly excessive play and door flop. The chances of a repro pin fitting perfectly 'out of the box' are pretty minimal.

3) Hinges have been 'got at' by PO, so are very hard to put right

4) If all of above are insuperable then buy new hinges (e.g. Paddocks). Ok except the repro hinges are not made 100% accurate and can require skimming to the correct thickness and holes extending to line up with the captive plates.

The recovery procedures, using bushes, mentioned in the links above are excellent if one has the facilities for such machining.

My practical tip would be to acquire a least one spare hinge and refurb that on the bench then swap it over to the vehicle. At least then if one unit is unrecoverable one's not stranded with an un-driveable car.

I went round the houses on exactly this issue. In the end the most cost and time effective thing to have done would have been to buy repro hinges and adapt as required.

 

[JonLow]

Thanks all for the thoughts so far.

The Spit 1500 was my wedding car, bought back as a rotten garage find. I have restored it and had many crying fits and temper tantrums over the two years refurbing it, mainly over the repro spares being either just plain wrong, not fitting, or rubbish quality. Trouble is I have this thing about trying to maintain the car's soul, by keeping as much of it as possible as original parts.

The car did make it's new maiden voyage to Malvern and back recently. So I think I will add the door pin replacements to my every growing list of "things to redo properly over the winter." I will chance buying replacement pins from one of the best possible sources, Chic Doig.

Any more thoughts, or observations are still much appreciated.

Jon Low

 

[Colin Lindsay]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/370509801094?fits=Car+Make%3ATriumph&hash=item56441ae686:g:nTgAAOSwiLVf2J0z

One of my fav eBay sellers has them. 

[PeteH]

Hi

If I recollect accurately. I "reamed" (with a drill) and refitted one with a pin made of 5/16"? "stubbs" steel?. And left the top hole marginally smaller to give a drive in fit. Then fitted the pin from "below", although I was doing it on the bench.

Pete