Posted 15 March 2006 - 11:23 PM
Hi, I had an email request from one of the members regarding my comments on car door opening. I am not sure my return email got to them so I am posting it here in case others have questions too. Original comments edited out.
Hi,
I am up in Canada, so not that far away and familiar with north american cars. My car is a 1997 Buick Lesabre. You reference to the post did not come across correctly so I will go with what I have done. It is quite common up here, but very dependant on the vehicle. The changes can usually be done by anyone handy, or your local mechanic. A body man is usually not required. If you give me your make and year of car, I might be able to be of more assistance. Anyhow, her is some explaination....Ok, did a search on the forums and picked up the post.
Anyhow, there are three things that affect how wide the door opens: How the hinge is hung relative to the car, How wide open the normal hinge stop has been set at, and thrirdly (is hat a word? lol) How far back the front fender has been designed to be. I will try to explain using my car as a reference.
When GM manufactured my car, the thought was that a normal person would enter the door. GM did not want the door to open too far for a few reasons. Initially, they did not want a door to open so far that a car parked beside mine would be hit by the door. Secondly, if the door opens too far then the person sitting in the front seat has to lean out too far to close the door. Sound reasonable? Therefore, GM has set the door stop on the hinge in a position to limit how far that door will swing open.
First the good news. If you open the door fully and look at the hinge. There are a couple of parts, but you will see that a small finger from one side of the hinge, contacts a bump on he otherside of the hingle limiting how far the door can be open. If you grind away a portion of the finger, then you can increase how far the door can open. Even very small amounts taken off of the hinge results in a large difference in how far the door can open.
Some bad news. Walk around to the outside of the door to where the front fender gets close to the door. Between the door and the fender is a small crack separating the two. As the door opens more and more, this crack "usually" reduces. You do not want the door opening to the point where the door contacts the front fender.
Back to some good news. This is very dependant on the vehicle make and setup. As you grind away the finger, you may not close that crack depending on how the hinge is made. It's really a trial and error thing. In my case, that crack never closed up because the door swung inwards away from the fender as the hinge was worked on. Secondly, the front fender is mounted on a few points. If you unscrew the fender, you may be able to pull it a small ways forward away from the door. Again a bit of trial and error. The small distances moved are usually never noticable to most people unless you really point them out. You simply have to try it out. As I said, dependant on the vehicle and a bit of trial and error. Lucky enough, there is little risk in making the attempt.
Some cautions. On the door hinge there is a little roller that rides along the metal sort of like a wheel. I should really get my camera out and take pictures. let me know if you need me to do this. The "normal" stop point has this little wheel sitting in a little half circle on the other half of the hinge. If you push the door open too far, the door will normall swing a bit closed. As you grind the hinge you will normally get this little wheel to ride out of the divot. I don't see that as any big deal. As the door swings farther out, you should also check to see where the door swings to inside the fender area. Over grinding the hinge may allow the door to contact the inside of the body near the hinge.
A few notes. It's no big deal if the door opens too wide. Usually handicapped parking allows for wider door openings. If the door sits too wide, then you can always connect a little strap to the door and to somewhere insdie the car so the person does not have to reach too far out to get the door closed. just pull on the strap. At some point, you may not be able to grind the hinge any more. From this point you can still get a bit more door opening. The half of the hinge that is connected to the car (not the door) is mounted by 3 or 4 bolts. If you loosen off the bolts you can sometimes insert some heavy washers between the car and the hinge on the two bolts furtherst from the fender. The result of this is the door tends to be open a bit more from the get-go. Most doors when mounted this way have no problem with the door still closing or lining up correctly. There is no reason for GM to add more washers and hence more work to the car than necessary.
Some answers. On my car, the normally hung door opened to about 45 degrees (half way open). When some simple grinding on the hinge stops resulted in opening closer to 75 degrees. Any more opening than this and you don't gain much and it's usually a chunk of work.
I hope this all made sense. I can take photo's and post them on the forums if you think it would help more. Take a look at the hinge and see if my directions make sense. If you know anyone handy with a dremel or other type fo grinder, than you can usually experiment without doing much work.
Let me know what else you may need. As I said, it is often very dependant on the vehicle as to how much success you can have. Watch the fender to door contact and the door to car frame contact. Grind a little and you may be surprised. I do not pay for long distance phone calls so if you wanted, I could call you to talk about it more. Just put down a phone number and best times to call and I will let you know by email or phone if I can do those times. Alternately try it out and see what comes.
AHolland
T4/T5
0
something low to the ground, perhaps a car not a van or SUV but we might have to deal with what we have to deal with.
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