Door striker ripping from jam?!

[manimal]

Has anybody had trouble with door strikers ripping the sheet metal from the door jam? Can this just be welded and doors aligned properly to fix the problem? BTW its a 1976 K20.Thanks
-Lance

[SanitysBane]

Same thing happend to our 88 Chevy Van. Its just a parts runner for when the truck is down, so I never really bothered with it.

[Zoomad75]

Yep. I just had to repair one side on my 75 K5. I'd take a look at your hinges as mine were shot. That required a mule kick to get the door to shut and latch. It was bad enough that the striker actually got bent in towords the interior on one side, while the other side had 6 good cracks coming from it.

I replaced all the hinge pins and bushings and adjusted the doors to shut nice. My buddy broke out the mig and carefully stitched up the cracks on the one side. we did not remove the pin though. We were afraid the captured nut it is screwed into was loose and would fall into the body cavity. So we had to work around it with it as loose as we felt comfortable with. I didn't even take a grinder to the welds. just repainted it white. It's not pretty, but the area is solid again and the doors shut like new.

If someone had more time, you can fix the cracks and grind the welds down and put a proper coat of paint on the jamb.

Edit----

While you are there, you might want to look at the hinge mounting surface on the door too. Mine had cracks on both doors in this area. Pretty common too. We welded those cracks up too.

[manimal]

Cool Thanks Guys!
-Lance

[sixty8c10]

having this same problem with my blazer....at least i was when i was home last

[joeymarkgraf]

What can you adjust on doors? Just the striker or can you adjust the latching mechanism?

[Zoomad75]

You can adjust the striker pin on the jam a few millimeters in any direction. The rest of the adjustment is made at the hinges where they bolt to the body. The passenger side door on mine came off at least 6 times to tweak/move the hinges. (dirtylarry is a pro at this and wouldn't stop until it shut right) My driver side door only took a couple of trys.

My advice, replace the pins and bushings in the hinges first before trying to adjust. Mine were wiped out. No amount of adjustment would make up for the slop they had. For about $20 at Autozone in the "help" section you can get all the pin kits you need. Since the doors have to come off to replace the pins, you can get started on the adjustments once the pins are replaced.