replacing/fixing door strut fixing brackets.

[mec]

mind blowing awsome work from Darren ! and Nice electricals from Admin too !

[ALEXAKOS]

You're messing moth us Darren!
This is the result of skills, practice and damn good tooling. If my garden had a shed, I would probably get it burned down trying to figure out welding. I am a rookie at TIG. Not to mention. The NASA microwelding!! ???
Hahaha!

Compliments fairly paid mate!


Sent from a mobile device. Please excuse typos etc

[Darren C]

Just basic tools Alex....you can make anything with the right tools. Even model airports

[ALEXAKOS]

WHAT??? Hey are you stalking me? :p
How did you land this conversation on model airports???


Sent from a mobile device. Please excuse typos etc

[Darren C]

No, I just googled your longitude and latitude out of curiosity and got all your model airplane stuff.

[ALEXAKOS]

hahahaha
Yes my LAN LON details. Seems to catch eyes lately. Looking to drop me a "Bim"? (as Inspector Clouseau said)
Its Kifissia / athens / Greece
Yup models collection, old hobbies. Actually selling those models got me the DMC!!!
And only sold 1/4 of them!

[flux3d]

Got the brackets from Darren today and they are AWESOME! Shed industries could give other DeLorean suppliers a real run for their money. It even comes with DETAILED instructions on how to fit them, including a hand drawn diagram!

Thanks again Darren, you are a star!

I'll hopefully be fitting them in the next week so I'll post on here with loads of pictures of the process.

[Phil349]

Nice work Darren (as usual!)
How do the backing plates fit? Since the fibreglass body tub in that area is a box section which is filled with foam? You cannot access the back of that surface can you? Or through the hole?

[Darren C]

Hi Phil,

Yes your right, it is a box section. A new small "letterbox" slot is cut from inside the car to fit the strongback plate. This gives an unequalled strength to the bracket. Once installed with a little Tiger bond/polyurethane sealer, you can refill the new letterbox slot with expanded foam if required.
Because all fixings are on the vertical plane and covered by the door aperture finisher, there is no chance of water ingress and its an invisible repair.

[Phil349]

Good way of doing it. Looking at the car I'm currently working on there is a nice neat slot cut in the fibreglass on the inside of the car below the original backing plate already, identical on both sides. I assume done at the factory to enable them to fit the original backing plate. The slots have been sealed with black sealant like various other places. I've only seen this on this car so don't know if it was something only done to later cars? (Its a Jan 82 car). The car hasn't had the plates replaced already as the ball studs are at a slight angle and doesn't look like anyone has been in that area and looks factory. Although I can't say for 100% sure.
I know these slots were not present on my car (April 81). As you know I've done this repair on mine, but I made some new ball stud brackets that fit along the horizontal surface more like the style of the henninger ones, however much nicer looking! They are longer and fit with the shape of that area, secured with counter sunk screws and painted satin black, so although you can see them they dont look too out of place. The screws go through the fibreglass to a backing plate of the same dimensions as the bracket, so the fibreglass is sandwiched between, spreading the load over a large area. They have been on the car for about two and a half years and are still fine. There is no flexing going on and they seem to do the job well enough so I will leave them as they are, but I do need to sort out something for the other car.