Door stay repair without gut opening and welding

[midnight911]

I borrowed this idea from another guy. it works.

few years ago, i tried to fix the door stay by installing the reinforcement kit. soon the damage went beyond what the kit can handle and the interior of the door completely disintegrated. it has been left damaged for few years. I had a nylon strap between the screws for the door panel and the kick panel to act as a temporary door stay a la jeep.

this idea i got is basically a reinforcement kit in steroids. since the sheet metal opening where the door stay goes through is too small to put anything larger than the reinforcement kit, it has been a common practice to uninstall the door, open gut, and weld in a sheet metal to repair where the door stay is mounted.

This new idea i obtained is to grind open a 3mm or so thick slit to insert a much larger metal plate which could not have been done via the opening the door has. So here it is. I think the picture tells what i did...and it's working.

[Taxi!]

Nice job and cred points for innovation. I ordered new door stays and reinforcement plates, only to discover that the driver's door had a) previously broken where the stay attached and had been welded by the previous owner, and b) had since broken again.

Your idea gives me motivation to re-examine it and see if this will help. Can you give measurements on your larger pieces? Instead of screwing directly into the reinforcement, did you just attach with a nut on the inside of the door? What width metal did you use and how did you bend it to match the shape of the door?

[midnight911]

The first pic shows the ripped inner structure where the top to bottom length of the opening was like 5 inches. So, i figured that the reinforcement sheet had to be larger than that, which I decided to be 6 inches. I cut open the 6 inch slit, then using some manila folder, came up with a template. I had some scrap 3mm (3/32 inch) aluminum sheet so used 3mm thick cutting disk on a grinder. I made the plate that goes into the slit - the sheet right next to the door stay in the third pic - using the 3mm sheet. 3mm alum is strong enough it shouldn't go anywhere.
I had another 1mm thick aluminum scrap so the backing plate that goes inside the door came off this sheet which is the second from the left piece in the third pic. I used the commercial reinforcement kit piece as a template and just enlarged it to meet the contours of the inside. digital camera comes handy for this. 1mm sheet is a lot more manipulative so i used the commercial reinforcement piece made of steel - the left most piece in the third pic - to pinch down the backing plate.
you know these things make nasty noise when they start to disintegrate. I hear none of that now.
hope this makes sense.

edit: to answer the other question about if i used nuts. no, i just used longer bolts to catch the door stay and tightened it up. only two bolts are used to sandwich everything.

[Taxi!]

Midnight,

So I finally got around to removing my door panel to replace the gaskets around the power mirror switches and to take a look at my door stay, and have a few more follow up questions.

1) I now don't understand the point of cutting the slit in the door, since it seems easy to pass the 6" piece of 3mm aluminum through the speaker opening. Did this piece go BETWEEN the outer and inner door skins?
2) If not, what's the purpose of the 1mm aluminum?

So from what I can see in the pictures it seems like your order of installation from inside the door to outside is 1) factory door stay 2) commercial steel inner reinforcement from Pelican 3) 6" 3mm fabricated aluminum plate 4) commercial steel outer reinforcement plate from Pelican. Is that right? Any clarification is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Jeff

[midnight911]

the sheet metal part the door stay goes onto is completely gone as you can see in the first pic. so the 1mm and 3mm large pieces of aluminum I used are my substitute for the stay to go on. I used the commercial steel reinforcement backing plate to spread the load on to the 1mm aluminum to ensure 1mm aluminum piece does not get bent at the bolt/ nut location. the 3mm part is necessary to cover the destroyed door sheet panel but it is too large to get into position from existing hole the stock door provides thus cutting a slit to insert the piece.

so, from the inside to outside, the order is
the door stay (has thread to catch the bolt) > reinforcement kit backing plate (steel) > 1mm aluminum piece > door sheet metal (destroyed) > 3mm aluminum piece (positioned via the slit) > washer > bolt > door outer sheet metal.

without the 3mm, the 1mm will just float around inside the door.

it's been 1.5 yrs since this repair and it is all good to this day.
hope this makes sense to you. if you look at how the door is constructed, it should make sense to you.