Car Door Project

by Uncle Hans

And the long lost Uncle Hans reports in! Saturday started out, like most days, in the hot tub. It is a brisk 10 degrees and the wind sock shows the gale force wind out of the west. I am wearing my hot tub hat, which I needed only about 12 mornings this winter. Note the snow by Wendy's ashtray. It is cloudy and dreary. I love spring in Wisconsin. So that made me come up with a project.

An indoor project.................

............a week ago Ian got into a traffic accident with the result as shown. He pulled out from a stop sign in front of someone. He said he didn't see them because they were "hidden by a big truck" Ironically, it was at the very same intersection where Hannah had a similar accident about five years ago. She was a the stop sign, looked right---no one coming, looked left--no one coming. Pulled out and WHAM!!. A 17 year old guy had been sitting in an alley 50 yards to her right, ready to pull out and drive her direction. Just after she checked to see that no one was coming, he pulled out. He got on his souped up Mustang so hard that he accelerated so much that he totaled both cars! In 50 YARDS!
Turns out he had been in a car accident at a toddler and now has"tunnel vision" (an actual medical diagnosis). He is not permitted by law to drive after 5PM (it was 4:30PM). He never saw Hannah. Hannah got a citation for pulling out in front of someone from a stop sign. Technically, she was in the wrong.
Ian? No ticket!!
Go figure?!?....................

.........So, as you can see, most of the damage is confined to the driver's door. Being the Swiss cheap ass that I am, I figured I could just call the junk yard and slap a door on there snicker-snack. That brings me to the junkyard part of the story. Used-to-be you just called the local junkyard and they had or found your part in a day or two for little or nothing. I called 4 local junkyards. 2 were out of business and the other 2 were headed that way. We are out of local junkyards. I could not figure out why until I went on the Internet to find the part. It literally took 60 seconds. ( I already had 2 days invested in the local guys. I could have had it delivered, but for some (Swiss) reason decided to drive 30 miles south of the cites to the 100 acre junkyard and pick it up. Everything there is computerized and the whole exchange of $95 for the exact door I needed was about 3-4 minutes............

......now for the easy part: "slapping" it on. I had to take the old mirror off first. The new door did not have one. I suspect that door mirrors don't live in junkyards very long, given the number of premature deaths from backing-into-garage-door injuries. Anyway, the computer had found the mirror on my door and already sold it to some backing genius for $50. Speaking of backing aptitude, you can see from the picture that that is ABSENT in Callie and Ian as the existing mirror is bloody and arthritic from several painful door encounters. I finally just drilled holes in the door and window frame and screwed the mirror back on each time with long sheet metal screws. (Hey! New ones from the junk yard probably cost $50!). So that was step one.............

..........Taking the old door off proved to be ridiculously easy, although were were bright enough to study the accessibility to the bolts before and decided to leave the hinge on the new door on the bottom and take it off on the top........

........Putting it back together proved to be less simple. I called in Jason, whose first comment was not that comforting, "I don't like doors or dashes. My experience is all bad". It was tricky to get the hinge bolt holes to match up and it took some bad language. It was not difficult enough, however, as to require beer. The door matched up pretty well. It latches well. The rear door, which has a little damage, fits less well and would not adjust. The front door adjusted to work like new. Jason even hooked up the speaker wires so the door speaker works...........

.......I had Jason take this picture so that you would get the impression that I actually contributed to the project................

........the toughest part was getting the markings off, it eventually took gasoline and elbow grease. Jason does not look amused here. It is because we have finished early and now he has to go to Melrose for Easter. (another story, which, happily, I can no longer tell). You can see the door does not fit perfectly. I suspect there is some door "frame" damage from the impact. It latches well and will be safe. It will need some weather stripping work to keep out the rain. I am sure it will make wind noise on the road.

Oh well, just turn up the stereo!...........

...........the finished product, ready for Ian to take to college.....

and soon I hope!............