Door Strap Fix by Vent Window.

[BrianG]

Has anyone had any success fixing (welding of otherwise) the door strap by the vent window without ruining the paint? Please share techniques and what worked and didn't work. Thanks.

[LockDoc]

Originally Posted by BrianG

Has anyone had any success fixing (welding of otherwise) the door strap by the vent window without ruining the paint? Please share techniques and what worked and didn't work. Thanks.

No matter how you do it you will have to remove the wing vent window. I posted some pictures in this thread.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=633866

LockDoc

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by LockDoc

No matter how you do it you will have to remove the wing vent window. I posted some pictures in this thread.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=633866

LockDoc

Thanks, The door is just a shell right now, but it is installed on the truck. This was supposed to be repaired when it was getting paint and body work done. It seems as though they either forgot or just didn't want to do it. I had some issues with the shop in the end, and it would not be at all convenient to take it back to them to have them fix it. I have a mig welder, but I'm not sure if that will put too much heat into it and ruin the paint. I have two places where it is cracked. The first is like in your pictures. That seems easy enough to fix without damaging the paint. The second place is on the inside panel of the door. There is a crack on the tab there that gets pretty close to the top of the door. I don't know enough about automotive paint to know how much heat it can take, or how far the heat from the mig welder will really spread.

Here are a couple of pictures. Please excuse the horrible quality. The camera didn't want to focus in on the right places and the flash was a bit bright. The arrow in the first picture points to the crack on the inside panel of the door. You can see how close it gets to the top edge of the door.

[LockDoc]

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Looks to me like that would be hard to weld without burning the paint.... It won't take a lot of heat.. You can lay rags soaked in ice water on the paint outside, which would help. You might get by with it if you used small spots and cooled it down between each one. It would be a crap shoot at best.

LockDoc

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by LockDoc

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Looks to me like that would be hard to weld without burning the paint.... It won't take a lot of heat.. You can lay rags soaked in ice water on the paint outside, which would help. You might get by with it if you used small spots and cooled it down between each one. It would be a crap shoot at best.

LockDoc

I was afraid of that. Do you think that if I were to drill a very small hole at the end of the crack and weld just the beginning of the other end, before it gets too close to the top, would it hold up, or would it probably just fail again soon?

[LockDoc]

Originally Posted by BrianG

I was afraid of that. Do you think that if I were to drill a very small hole at the end of the crack and weld just the beginning of the other end, before it gets too close to the top, would it hold up, or would it probably just fail again soon?

I wouldn't really want to guess on that, because that's what it would be. It probably depends on how much you would open and close the door and how hard it is to close....

LockDoc

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by LockDoc

I wouldn't really want to guess on that, because that's what it would be. It probably depends on how much you would open and close the door and how hard it is to close....

LockDoc

Thanks for your comments LockDock, I appreciate it. Looks like at this point, it is very likely that I'll have to have at least part of the inside of the door repainted. Definitely not what I want to have done, but probably better to do it now then when the truck is all back together. I'm sure the door will close pretty hard when I first get it back together. It will have all new seals and based on most of the posts I've read, it takes them a while to get set in.

[snipescastle2]

would J-B weld/belzona do the trick? I think if you could dress the areas with a dremel tool and use some J-B weld/belzona, it would make a pretty sound repair.
HTH,
Ben

[BrianG]

Personally, I've never had much luck with JB weld for something like this. There would be a lot of outward stress on it. However, I wonder if panel adhesive would be strong enough to hold. LocDoc, or others... Do you think that if I bent a piece of metal in the same shape as the strap so that it fit tightly underneath the strap. Then used panel adhesive and clamped the new strap to the old one. Would that hold up? I know that GM uses panel adhesive in place of welds in some of their vehicles. I believe the bed of my 2001 Sierra is held together by panel adhesive. Not sure how it would work in this situation though.

[snipescastle2]

Never thought about panel adhesive, using that and maybe a large pop rivet would work, and the pop rivet would lay flush on that tab.
Ben

[LockDoc]

Originally Posted by BrianG

Personally, I've never had much luck with JB weld for something like this. There would be a lot of outward stress on it. However, I wonder if panel adhesive would be strong enough to hold. LocDoc, or others... Do you think that if I bent a piece of metal in the same shape as the strap so that it fit tightly underneath the strap. Then used panel adhesive and clamped the new strap to the old one. Would that hold up? I know that GM uses panel adhesive in place of welds in some of their vehicles. I believe the bed of my 2001 Sierra is held together by panel adhesive. Not sure how it would work in this situation though.

That would be worth a try that stuff is awesome.... It would have to be really clean though.

LockDoc