Anyone ever change Tail gate to Barn Doors?

[OverRunWithSons]

We want to take the entire tailgate off of our suburban, completely rusted, broken window, needs inside parts etc. We got another BUrb (same year 1988) with the Barn Doors, any articles you know of on how to do this swap? Any advice? Will welding have to be involved? Tough job, fairly easy? Thanks

[kevinr1970]

On my '79 the doors from a '73 were a direct bolt on.
Check the door frame on the sides and see if there is two sets of three holes on each side. They will probably be coverd by plastic hole plugs.
In these holes there should be some weld-nuts for mounting the doors already welded to the inside of the body.
I also seem to remember someone saying they stopped doing this on all the burb's after a certain year but I was never sure if that was when they changed the body in '92 or if it was earlier. But if you have both burb's their to comapare then you should have you answer in front of you.

BUT....
There is no way to latch the doors shut. If I remeber correctly the driver side door is the one that actually latches to the body and the passenger latches to the driver door.
If you look where the driver door latches to the roof and to the floor there is nothing to latch to.

That could be handled by a person with a little welding/fabricating skill I am sure.
I never fixed mine. I ran a strap from one hinge, through the door handle, to the hinge on the other side.
Very ghetto.

[WLPTMP]

the tailgate to doors require the bottom rocker type panel to be changed

[Zoomad75]

I've seen it done, but the later models, 81-up (or thereabout iirc) had two separate rear door styles. youu could get either as the option, but natually not both. They stopped putting both bracketry setups until the tired old 350 had tp o/

[OverRunWithSons]

Thank you for all of your help, I will show this to my husband, I do see that it does have the 3 bolts under the rubber flap thing for the hinges for the barn Doors on the GMC '88 suburban. The one with the Tailgate seems to have a little "indent" where these bolts would go. But that is all. Here is another link I started on another site about this, it has some info too, in case anyone else interested in this subject. http://www.gmtruckclub.com/forum/sho...8210#post28210

[jimfulco]

On my '79 Sub, both rear barn doors latch to the body, not to each other. They can each be closed and latched with the other side open.