12/14/01
Working on the Door

This one picture shows all I worked on today!

I finished making a upper hinge pin. I made it slightly oversized and carefully fitted in place. It turned out the bottom hinge was in pretty good shape, and had very little play, so only the upper pin needed to be replaced. The original size was probably 8 mm in diameter, but as I carefully turned a new pin on the lathe, I found that at 8.1-8.2 mm, the pin fit snugly in place. After drilling a new cotter pin in the hinge pin, I lightly hammered it in place. Now the door closes very nicely without any sagging.

The next issue that needed to be addressed at this door, was the wiring. The mess you see at the center of the picture is the wires, and labels I made several months ago to help make some sense of needed to be connected to a push button switch that turns on the interior lights. I installed the switch and inserted the fuse that would energize the interior lights to check my wiring. Unfortunately, something was terribly wrong! Although the dome light went on, when the driver’s side door was open, the parking lights would go on as well!?! If I closed the door, all the lights would go off! Looking at my wiring diagram, I found the parking lights not even on the same circuit as the dome light! Boy, was I confused. I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what, or how the wiring was so screwed up. When I got my car, all the wiring was unplugged, and unlabeled, so who knows what was right and what was changed. I left the shop today with very few solutions.