DIY Door Adjustment
Discussion
Dear Tivvers!
I've lurked a lot and learned a whole bunch too, so I thought I should give something back.
DIY door adjustment on a Chimaera is not as difficult or as scary as it's made out to be. I've just done mine this weekend and I thought I'd write up a quick overview of what I did and why I did it as I'm sure others will want to do this too.
So, why did I do this? Both doors had dropped enough to fowl against the body of the car. The passenger door had also moved towards the rear of the car, so when closed the rear edge of the door rubbed on the body and wore the paint away. It appeared that the door had grown (or the body shrunk!).
I wanted to move both doors up a bit (3mm) and move one forward by 3mm. I wasn't sure if I would be able to achieve this and there was only one way to find out for sure. Undo stuff.
To do this job, you'll require a 13mm socket, a short extension (or a very deep socket) and a ratchet. You'll also want some packers to hold the door while you retighten everything. I used strips torn from a recent Amazon cardboard box.
Each door hinge has 4x 13mm bolts the run from the inside of the car, through the body and into the hinge attached to the door. When you open the door, you can see the threaded end of the top two bolts where they protrude from the hinges.
To get to these, you need to get your head into the footwell and peel back the carpet. You can figure out where by looking at the hinges. The bolts travel straight through. These bolts are devilishly tricky to get at. One especially. You need to jiggle some cables out of the way (but not disconnect anything). I did pull the heater pipe out of the air vent on the passenger side to have the rotation I needed with my ratchet.
I loosened (not removed) the two bolts at the top. I wanted to be able to jiggle the door without it falling off. I then turned my attention to the bottom two hinge bolts. Peel back the carpet just in front of the door opening. If you were sitting in the passenger seat, you'd want to peel the carpet back that's next to the side of your left foot.
You'll find two golf ball sized holes and in them the 13mm heads of the bottom hinge bolts. Loosen them off. Tip - Tape your socket to your extension. You do not want it to fall into the sill.
Now you should have a door that you can move around a fair bit.
With the door open, I stacked the cardboard mentioned above on the sill, a little at a time, until the door closed in the correct location, with no drop.
For the door that was a little too far back, I tapped it on the door edge with a rubber mallet and it moved forward by about 3mm, so there's a little wiggle room there.
Thankfully, I didn't need to adjust the lock mechanism as I was returning the door to where it used to be. Looks pretty easy to adjust though, if you needed a few mm, you could gently loosen it and wiggle it up a bit.
Once the door was where I wanted it when closed, I checked the gaps visually and then clambered back into the footwell to retighten the bolts.
I then opened the door, removed my cardboard packers and checked the door operation. Perfect.
It took about 45 mins per door on account of the top hinge bolts being awkward to access.
I also noticed that one of my doors has packers on the hinge that, I think, rotate the door on its long axis. I didn't mess with this as I was not looking for that kind of adjustment.
I hope this helps some of you to sort your dropped door problems!
Kind regards,
Mark
I've lurked a lot and learned a whole bunch too, so I thought I should give something back.
DIY door adjustment on a Chimaera is not as difficult or as scary as it's made out to be. I've just done mine this weekend and I thought I'd write up a quick overview of what I did and why I did it as I'm sure others will want to do this too.
So, why did I do this? Both doors had dropped enough to fowl against the body of the car. The passenger door had also moved towards the rear of the car, so when closed the rear edge of the door rubbed on the body and wore the paint away. It appeared that the door had grown (or the body shrunk!).
I wanted to move both doors up a bit (3mm) and move one forward by 3mm. I wasn't sure if I would be able to achieve this and there was only one way to find out for sure. Undo stuff.
To do this job, you'll require a 13mm socket, a short extension (or a very deep socket) and a ratchet. You'll also want some packers to hold the door while you retighten everything. I used strips torn from a recent Amazon cardboard box.
Each door hinge has 4x 13mm bolts the run from the inside of the car, through the body and into the hinge attached to the door. When you open the door, you can see the threaded end of the top two bolts where they protrude from the hinges.
To get to these, you need to get your head into the footwell and peel back the carpet. You can figure out where by looking at the hinges. The bolts travel straight through. These bolts are devilishly tricky to get at. One especially. You need to jiggle some cables out of the way (but not disconnect anything). I did pull the heater pipe out of the air vent on the passenger side to have the rotation I needed with my ratchet.
I loosened (not removed) the two bolts at the top. I wanted to be able to jiggle the door without it falling off. I then turned my attention to the bottom two hinge bolts. Peel back the carpet just in front of the door opening. If you were sitting in the passenger seat, you'd want to peel the carpet back that's next to the side of your left foot.
You'll find two golf ball sized holes and in them the 13mm heads of the bottom hinge bolts. Loosen them off. Tip - Tape your socket to your extension. You do not want it to fall into the sill.
Now you should have a door that you can move around a fair bit.
With the door open, I stacked the cardboard mentioned above on the sill, a little at a time, until the door closed in the correct location, with no drop.
For the door that was a little too far back, I tapped it on the door edge with a rubber mallet and it moved forward by about 3mm, so there's a little wiggle room there.
Thankfully, I didn't need to adjust the lock mechanism as I was returning the door to where it used to be. Looks pretty easy to adjust though, if you needed a few mm, you could gently loosen it and wiggle it up a bit.
Once the door was where I wanted it when closed, I checked the gaps visually and then clambered back into the footwell to retighten the bolts.
I then opened the door, removed my cardboard packers and checked the door operation. Perfect.
It took about 45 mins per door on account of the top hinge bolts being awkward to access.
I also noticed that one of my doors has packers on the hinge that, I think, rotate the door on its long axis. I didn't mess with this as I was not looking for that kind of adjustment.
I hope this helps some of you to sort your dropped door problems!
Kind regards,
Mark
Edited by Harlan_Koavcs on Wednesday 24th April 20:03
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