Okay, time for the next installment.
I had mentioned earlier that I hound Craigslist a lot looking for whatever comes along.
One Saturday, bright and early, I spotted this...
Valerie was all excited about going on a Craigslist adventure with me until we got to the neighbor
hood where the doors were. She waited in the truck....with the door locked....
We settled on 90 dollars for the pair, so I got them loaded, and back to the ranch.
They're old Union Pacific railroad truck doors I think. Cool things is, they're the same Code 50 White color as my truck.
No where near perfect, but with some polishing, they look real good. If they were too perfect, they wouldn't match my truck.
My buddy at the dealership hooked me up with the goods. Take my word for it, genuine GM is higher quality than Dorman stuff is when it comes to door hinge rebuild parts. That's a lesson I learned after buying Dorman and being dissatisfied with the quality.
I did use the Dorman brand roller pins and springs though. The roller pins are 11 bucks each at Rockauto, and the GM ones are 40 each at the dealership. Also notice the new Delco door lock cylinders in the box. I'll get to that in a minute.
On the passenger side door, the roller pin was very bent.
On the driver's side, it was completely broken and the spring was MIA.
The trick to changing these is to use a Dremel to remove the mushroomed top and then drive them downward and out.
The old bent passenger side pin next to the new Dorman replacement. I did have to use a file and reduce the diameter of the knurled section on the new ones to make them work. I don't know if that would have been the case had I used genuine GM here, but the 60 dollars (per pair) savings by using aftermarket took the sting out of having to do some extra fussing with them to get the fitment right.
New passenger side installed.
Note new bushings in place too. Ready for the door install....
Last thing was new door handles. My old ones were typical sad shape and I really wanted the big truck style. For those of you lost on what I'm saying here, these are Kodiak/TopKick truck door handles. They are a straight bolt on swap to light duty trucks as long as you change the little rods that go to the latch and lock. There are threads on the internet that detail everything down to the exact part numbers needed for everything.
I bought aftermarket door handles from Rockauto for 21 dollars each rather than the 90 dollars each GM gets for genuine. The quality seems to be there and it appears to be money saved without compromise.
