One of the downsides to owning a solid well built old car is they have solid well built old doors, which weigh a metric shit load
All well and good for the first 20 years of the cars life but after that the hinge pins tend to wear out and the doors start to sag when open.

I think nearly every beetle I've owned has required the old Lift and Shut door closing proceedure due to worn hinges
New hinges used to be available along time back but I havent checked up these days to see if thats still the case, but I have a feeling they are NLA.
So the next best thing is to have the pins driven out, hinges reamed and oversize pins put in.
This can be performed with the hinges still on the door, but If you have an old rusty or dented door with good hinges still they can be swapped.

The other thing that can also happen is the hinges can get bent, which is the case with my bugs driverside door courtesy of my careless f**king ex


The bend is very obvious on my top hinge, as is the nice dent to the door skin where the door hit the hinge.




The lower hinge is actually bent where it mounts inside the door, but the door gap or lack of between it and the A pillar, and similar dent in the door skin tell the story




You would be hard pressed to slip a buisness card in the gap and also as a result the gap at the B pillar end is now that large that the door seal wasnt doing its job and I don't fancy driving to valla in this shitty weather with no heater and a cold shoulder.


Fortunately I have a nice straight solid original 74 door with good hinges here and most sane people would just respray this and swap it over.




But by the time I swap over my electric window and centrol locking setup, paint it, fit a new scraper and trim, swap in my tinted glass and smokers window, mounted my vitaloni mirror etc it's easier to just transfer the good hinges over to my existing door.
Seems a waste of a good door but it will probably only ever sit and never get used only to be crushed anyway.


So here's the proceedure for swapping hinges for anyone else who finds themselves in this situation.
All beetles are like this and I'll be that kombi, type3 KG etc are all similar


The hinges are held to the door with steel rivets
The top one has 4 or sometimes 3 thanks to cost cutting near the seal area.




The bottom has 2 rivets in this spot,




and a 3rd hiding under the door panel.




If your undertaking this job then one would assume you know how to drill out rivets
Its critical to get the drill dead center so a good centerpop does the trick so as to not ruin the tapered seat




I use a 6.5mm drill bit




After 36 years or more in the one spot they can be pretty stubborn, I use a block of wood and a BFH on the center of the hinge.
Bottom one may take some wriggling out due to the shape, mine really put up a fight cos of the bend in it.




Operation repeated on other door.... and you can see my problem




A rough straighten of the bent door skin for now




While psyching up myself up for the worst part I stood back and admired my new African Safari Edition Beetle and prayed for no rain




Now cos I dont have a VW factory in the backyard with rivets and riveting machine but I do have an abundance of these around the choice was made easy.
They're just 1/4" allen key tapered bolts that I use in my harvestor for the wheel pack pivots.




There's sweet FA room up inside the door around the top hinge to get the nuts on and you will end up with lots of skinned knuckles and an extended vocabulary.
It helps to take out the checkrod for a bit of extra room to work.




I probably should have used nyloc nuts but maybe next time.




And there you have it, they will self locate due to the tapered bolts






Wattle hinges stick out like dogs balls on a white car, I'll paint them after valla.
Atleast now I have a door seal that works and normal gaps and shuts like a new one again.

excellent job Joel..

but finding two good hinges may be difficult..
especially on a drivers door....

unless it was a lhd door... ?

great work.... first time I've ever heard of it done...

now everyone will be checking out Your door hinges at Valla Nambucca heads....
lol


cheers

Lee

yeah good story

Hi

CIP have new ones 19 & 26 USD each.

Both my 1303s have perfect hinges, my old 1302 bug had very worn hinges.

Steve

They're not terribly heavy, but it's good to know there are still new ones out there

Good Originals are rapidly running out

A useful tech post.

Was it difficult to drive the pins out?

Even if it cost $150 I'd gladly pay it for sake of having nice tight doors

Its not so bad shutting from the outside but trying to pull shut a saggy door from in the car with those limp vw arm rests gets tiring.

I gotta get used to the bug being sealed well now, I forgot how hard it is to shut the doors with the windows up when the seals are all good

Nice tech post! Now you'll have to crack open your 1/4 window to close the door.. hopefully the hinges on that won't wear out now

easier than I thought, thanks Joel, maybe those bent hinges could be straightened in a press?

Im sure someone with the patience and a press could do it,

Joel, before you replaced them if your door swung open would it "click" once it reached a certain point. Mine does and it doesnt seal well at all and i cant see a bend in the hinges but i wanna know if its worth repplacing the hinges.

Josh, if you want to bring the car around, I can have a look - it may be easy to fix.

Josh that click just before its completley open is the checkrod doing its job, it holds the door open if your not on flat ground


you may need to tweak the adjustment of the hinges and/or the catch if its not lining up sweet

nice work Joel.
great tech story!

Sticky anyone

I've already stickied it to my thread list

Hi

I was looking through my stash tonight and I found 2 NOS top hinges, cool.

Steve

Just to update this for anyone not wanting to pay for USA shipping.

VW Heritage Door hinges

These guys are very cheap for shipping compared to the US and with the current exchange rate the cost of the hinges is bout same as USA

Just incase anyone is doing this to their VW. Think I'll try heating and BFH-ing my bent ones back into shape.

My 50 year old hinges appear to have no play in them at all. Makes the door frame move when I wiggle the door