taking off the doors

[jeepmaster]

ok i was pokin around rustysoffroad today and lookin through the rusty rigs and i noticed several XJ's had their doors off. with warm weather comin id like to try this. does anyone know anything about this? or ever done it? i think im just gonna grab a wrench and see what i can do. any tips or horror stories or anything associated with this, feel free to share ~ thanks

if you wanna look at those XJ's go to www.rustysoffroad.com, click rusty rigs (bottom of toolbar), rigs # 9, 13, & 16, ill upload those pics in a second here.

edited by: jeepmaster, Feb 24, 2003 - 03:54 PM[addsig]

[Jeeppicus]

I've never done it to a XJ, but since they're attached like all other car doors, I have done something similar. We took the doors off a 87 Dodge Raider. We used bolt cutters to remove the pins. We originalls were going to use clevis pins to hold the doors back on later, but (now it turns to a horror story) we got tired and all left for the night leaving my friend with no doors. He was worried about rain, but I told him to get used to it, I leave my Jeep topless all summer. We came back the next day and had more important things to do (teenagers with A.D.D. ) so we just got some gate hinges from Home Depot and drilled those through the door and body instead of the clevis pin idea. They weren't to stable and when my friend went to sell it, one of the doors fell off onto the new owners foot. [addsig]

[remember5]

I wouldn't think that the xj which is unibody, would be as stable offroad without doors, and there would be a chance of tweaking the unibody if you went off camber too much and not getting the doors to line up again. For an example of this, take your xj off camber and open the rear hatch, then try to close it. Won't happen until you back down to a flat area. Just my opinion.[addsig]

	Camber Camber angle is the angle made by the wheel of an automobile; specifically, it is the angle between the vertical axis of the wheel and the vertical axis of the vehicle when viewed from the front or rear. If the top of the wheel is further out than the bottom (that is, away from the axle), it is called positive camber; if the bottom of the wheel is further out than the top, it is called negative camber.

[jeepmaster]

tell me more about the clevis pin idea? how hard was it to get the doors off and did you do any permanent damage to the door in anyway?

remember - yea my dad also mentioned that, this would be an ON road only type thing. just a little fun, probably would only do it once or twice. id rather not mud up the interior.

so do you think its possible to remove these with out doing permanent damage? i need to fix the door hinge anyway on the driver side. when i try to swing it closed it stops mid swing unless i give it a little more bam. any ideas on what exactly im gonna have to replace, my plan was to grab a flashlight and look for something that looked bent or worn out and replace it.[addsig]

[Jeeppicus]

It took about 30 minutes to take the doors off, and most of that was figuring out what we had to disconnect. Our idea was to get four long narrow clevis pins to replace the bolt that held the doors to the body, but we couldn't find any long enough so we were going to use eight small ones (one for the top and bottom of each hinge of the door, two hinges per door). The only damage we did to the door was with our ghetto gate hinges. If you use the clevis pin idea, you won't damage the door. Now that I'm thinking about it, if you have power doors, locks, or any other wiring going to the door you'll have another monster on your hands.[addsig]

[MudderChuck]

Taking the pins out of the door can be a pain, they are usually rusted in there and when they are not, there are wear ridges, that have to be aligned almost exactly, to get the hindge pin out. A bigger hammer doesn´t help much.
Unbolting the hindges is no big deal, mark the outside of the hindge mount first with a marking pen. So you can get it together again, in approximatly the same position. Save and mark the shims behind the hindges and get them back in the same place. Behind the kick panels, there are some plugs that can be disconnected, one plug is fairly high (at least on my 87). I´ve never taken the passenger door off, so I can´t swear it´s the same.
That hanging open thing, when you are trying to close the door, is probably the gizmo that holds the door open. If it´s sticking, replace it soon, as the leverage from closing the door can fatigue the sheet metal, in the door and cause the whole thing to come out by the roots (tears the sheet metal).
Re-installing the door after removal, can be a pain. I´ve rehung alot of doors and still have a little trouble with it, be prepared for a little cussing. A little off at the hindges, can translate into alot at the door lock.[addsig]

[pinaplebob]

From my dabbles in do-it yourself body work I would say that re-hanging the doors is a big pain in the butt. I would not even reccomend it. But it's all up to what your feeling to do. Like mudderchuck said...be prepared to do some cussing.[addsig]

[Tug-n-pull]

I don't see it worth the trouble! Man what a nightmare when you go monkeyin with auto springed hinges. Just trade fro a short wheelbase Jeep and lift off the soft doors anytime you wish. :-D tug[addsig]