Door saver brackets
03-22-2015, 01:18 PM
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Door saver brackets
Hi I'm new to this sight and have seen a few people in need of a solution to the 09 up Ford truck doors over extending. I'm also a body / restoration shop and just recently fixed an 2010 F-150 with hyper-extended door damage to both sides, as I studied this problem it occurs to me there needs to be a simple way to prevent this from happening, and there is!
The original hinges are far to small & improperly designed (to save weight I'm sure) first off they only have two bolts to each of them top & bottom and all four are on the same plane? Because of this the strength is limited to a small area that the bolted door shell can pivot on, if the bolts were staggered so to basically cover more area the door would not flex as much, of course the engineers tried to solve this wight saving concept used by small import cars for years by using the Limit, or check strap method.
And that concept works on small light weight doors on imports, & escorts etc. But the Ford truck doors are still large & heavy, plus they catch a lot of wind! and can swing open with so much force that they pull the check strap right out of it's mount in the door post the door hinges do have a bump stop, but it is past the outer skin crashing into the door hinge framework causing a damaged frt door edge and a sprung door! (very costly to fix at a body shop.)
So from time to time I will take the time and study a problem and I did on this latest 2010 F 150. As I did the repairs, i built two brackets that surrounds the door hinge, bolts over it with the original bolts, & stiffens it up and then wraps around the door shell and rivets into the inner structure. This itself locks the door from flexing when the hinge is stressed!
The next issue is the inner hinge it to is weakly mounted and can be seen flexing forward when stressing the door, so i made a holding brk that holds it in place by anchoring it in frt & through the door post with two bolts the brk also hooks into the hinge and adds the much needed bump stop before the outer door can hit & cause the damage so often seen on these trucks!
Basically just going back like old school door hinges in the past, at this point you can eliminate the original weak check strap or just leave in place to fill the hole,
i'm looking into making this a ready to buy product for do it your self truck owners or shop technicians to install within an hours time with basic hand tools! I may like to have a few testing partners though to full field test this new Door saver kit, any interest let me know. and thanks for letting me help.
The original hinges are far to small & improperly designed (to save weight I'm sure) first off they only have two bolts to each of them top & bottom and all four are on the same plane? Because of this the strength is limited to a small area that the bolted door shell can pivot on, if the bolts were staggered so to basically cover more area the door would not flex as much, of course the engineers tried to solve this wight saving concept used by small import cars for years by using the Limit, or check strap method.
And that concept works on small light weight doors on imports, & escorts etc. But the Ford truck doors are still large & heavy, plus they catch a lot of wind! and can swing open with so much force that they pull the check strap right out of it's mount in the door post the door hinges do have a bump stop, but it is past the outer skin crashing into the door hinge framework causing a damaged frt door edge and a sprung door! (very costly to fix at a body shop.)
So from time to time I will take the time and study a problem and I did on this latest 2010 F 150. As I did the repairs, i built two brackets that surrounds the door hinge, bolts over it with the original bolts, & stiffens it up and then wraps around the door shell and rivets into the inner structure. This itself locks the door from flexing when the hinge is stressed!
The next issue is the inner hinge it to is weakly mounted and can be seen flexing forward when stressing the door, so i made a holding brk that holds it in place by anchoring it in frt & through the door post with two bolts the brk also hooks into the hinge and adds the much needed bump stop before the outer door can hit & cause the damage so often seen on these trucks!
Basically just going back like old school door hinges in the past, at this point you can eliminate the original weak check strap or just leave in place to fill the hole,
i'm looking into making this a ready to buy product for do it your self truck owners or shop technicians to install within an hours time with basic hand tools! I may like to have a few testing partners though to full field test this new Door saver kit, any interest let me know. and thanks for letting me help.
