Well… you know, soarer/lexus sc door hinges are kinda not good after 20-30 years.
For some reason I have a strange passion about rebuilding them myself — learn about tolerances, materials etc.
I'm perfectly aware about Daryl Demarte and he has a reasonable price for rebuilt hinge — around 400$ delivery included.
So this repair it based on the famous (at least for me) article — planetsoarer.com/hinges/index.htm
First of all — WARNING. This guide is not complete guide of how to rebuild hinges. I would rather describe it as a first not very sucessful attempt — I'm not quite satisfied with the results. It's not as bad as worn out door hinge. But I missed couple small but important things during the process. So let's start
Soarer/sc door hinges has 2 functions:
1. turns door relative to the car body — if it's worn out then door hits car body when you close the door, door is harder to close — because door is sagged.
2. moves door away from the car body — if it's worn out then door hits front fender when you open the door — because door moves away from the car later than it's designed by the factory.
What I did with my door hinge is I made repair sleeves and studs for first case of failure. I was under impression this repair will fix both of these problems. But I didn't think hard enough, so I was kinda surprised when it fixed only first problem. So following text describes how to made repair kit for first kind of failure.
In order to make measurements you need to take apart the door hinge. First of all you need to remove 4 studs and 2 bearings. To remove studs you can weld thread to it and then remove it using reverse hummer. Same with bearings.
This is my diagram, don't judge it too strict — I'm not a pro in these diagrams — I needed at least a draft to show it to the workshop workers.
So you need 4 studs (2 small, 2 big) and 4 studs (2 small and 2 big accordingly).
This is what I gave to the workshop, as a result I got this:
For smaller sleeve I enlarged hole in the hinge to 12mm (it was 8.9mm) to make sleeve walls thick enough so it's strong enough to be pressed into hinge. Here're how pressed out sleeves look like:
In thicker sleeve I made an internal groove for a lubricant
At this point I already did a big mistake — sleeves have a flinge. This flinge adds up a thickness to the door hinge. Because of that I couldn't be able to assemble the hinge back. So I had to remove some flinge material to make internal part of the hinge fit into external one. Check out the picture so you can better understand what I'm talking about
So the conclusion from this mistake is — sleeve flinges are 1.5mm and 1mm (for bigger and smaller sleeve accordingly) thickness. You have to remove this amount of material (or a little bit less, if internal part of the hinge has a play when it's inserted into external part) from the internal part of the hinge to make everything fit.
Next — assembly.
I was be able to insert studs lightly tapping them into the hinge up to the point as shown on the following picture
To insert studs fully I had to use hydraulic press to make notch part of the stud to pass.
That's pretty much it — I got result I wanted — now problem 1 is fixed, I don't need to slam door anymore. But door is not moving as freely as it should (because I didn't remove material from the hinge to mitigate added up thickness of the sleeve flanges). And I still have a problem 2 described in the beginning of the article. How to fix it? Well after playing around with the hinge for such a long time I realized it pretty quickly.
You also need to do sleeves and shafts for these conjunctions IF they have a play in them. The good thing is — it's very easy to diagnose — you can grab these parts with your fingers and trying to move back and forth. If there's play — then they are worn out as well.
This is going to be my next step. I'm going to rebuild them as well. Stay tuned.
