Want to swap door striker plates...how do I access the back of the striker plates?

[DeadheadNM]

I want to add a set of Parkerized door striker plates to my Blazer. On a pickup there's a set of brackets on the backside you can easily access. Today I swapped my RH rear inside trim panel and was surprised I couldn't access the striker nuts/retainer plates. These are boxed in by the pillar. Do the plates bolt onto nutserts on the pillar? I'm afraid if I unbolt the plates the rear retainers will drop into the pillar.

[warbucket]

There is a threated plate inside the pillar for the striker, it is held in place so it will move but won't fall. The only way to get to it is to drill out the spot welds on the pillar and remove the cover. some blazers even have two bolts coming up into the cover, you can see them if you look in the rocker box.

[DeadheadNM]

Thank you. Can I unbolt the existing striker plates then without mucking with anything in the pillar and bolt the new plates into place?

[D.PASSMORE]

If your talking about replacing the threaded plate inside the pillar - No, there is a factory welded bracket inside the pillar that holds the threaded plate. You have to remove the cover, cut the spot welds, pry up bracket, remove the threaded striker plate, replace with a good one, work your way back out. I have a threaded plate that is stripped out, I'm thinking hella coil now.
If your referring to the outside striker plate, just unbolt existing striker plate and replace with a replacement. But you might have to shim it to get correct fit.

[burton'sblazer]

I ran into a problem trying to use a helicoil on my striker plates. Since there is no place to "bottom out" the helicoil it kept threading through the striker plate when I would try to tighten the bolt. I found a different style of threaded insert on McMaster-Carr, looks like pic below. Once you thread it in flush with the striker plate, tap in the tabs and it is locked into place. Worked well so far for me. I fixed three holes on my two plates without major any surgery.

[DeadheadNM]

Thanks guys! I'm just swapping striker plates and wanted to ensure that once I unbolt the existing pieces I can bolt the new ones into place. On pickups there is no fixed thread on the pillar but a threaded backing plate that would drop with gravity once the bolts are removed.

[Ole Beater]

I used metric bolts if you cant find replacements.

[DeadheadNM]

Got the bolts thanks. I went to swap these but the threaded brackets/plates inside the pillars got really loose after the first of the upper and lower bolts were removed so I stopped fearing the threads would drop into the bottom of the pillar.