Help, I've buggered up me side door :-(

[aec]

I think this is my first post so hello all, just wish it could be about something nicer. I could cry. Actually, I did. Like a baby.

Just moving my van round the corner of my drive so I left the side door open. It's quite a tight corner and why I wasn't paying more attention I really don't know but you can probably guess what happened next.... BANG!

Clipped the edge of the open door on the corner of the house, the house won. The door has been pushed back a further half inch from the normal fully open position, popping out of the top and bottom rollers and jamming up the locking mechanism good and proper.

The door won't budge, presumably because of the lock having half the side panel rammed into it. I want to minimise any further damage; anyone got any ideas on the best way to get out of this mess? I've attached a couple of photos of the lock area.

I can't believe I've pranged my otherwise perfect van


[img:500:375]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3052/273 ... b7034a.jpg[/img]

[img:500:375]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3020/273 ... ecf56d.jpg[/img]

Top bearing popped out and looking a bit bent as it's pushed into the frame which has also bent

[img:500:375]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3285/273 ... d40096.jpg[/img]

Wahh ahhha hhaaaaa!!!!!!

any ideas?
Al

[aec]

Well I finally managed to get the thing freed using various screwdrivers at odd angles to get the door latch unscrewed from the body. Thankfully the screws weren't too tight/rusted!! Got the upper and lower guides back in and the door closes but things don't look to be aligned quite right at the moment, but that's a job for another day. As is sorting out the bent metalwork

[CovKid]

I do feel for you. I think we've all done something equally daft so don't worry too much. Bet you don't do it again though!

[Fritz]

Sorry to here and see your dilemma, bloody good images of the damage BTW.....




Regards,


Fritz.....

[aec]

Cheers guys, glad you enjoyed the photos!

A couple more newbie questions... Does the slide mechanism cover just lift off once the two fixing screws have been removed? It seemed tight and I didn't want to damage it further.

Also, does the angle the ball thing for the top runner is at in my photo look right? I can't remember it being at such an angle, but I hoping it must have been as I'm sure the force of impact wasn't enough to have bent the bracket!

[Fritz]

Yes ,
Once the screws have been removed, the cover for the slide rail needs to gently pushed up wards and outwards (away from the van, enough to clear the screw brackets) but at the same time holding it firmly to avoid any damage to paint work once it comes free.

Top guide as you suggest needs to be twisted back to a vertical position for it to sit and run in the guide as it should.


Regards

Fritz,,,,,,,,,,,,

[PEET]

If it makes u feel any better I dropped a disco speaker onto my sliding door and put a huge dink in my very near perfect Bluestar a few months back and havent afforded to fix it yet so its still looking at me every day...
Hope ya get it done quicker!!

[aec]

I've put everything back together, I don't think the top bracket was bent (I couldn't believe something that strong could bend anyway without a LOT more damage being done) I knocked the square plastic block back onto the ball and it slides nicely in the runner. I got the side panel off and managed to straighten it out reasonably for now.

But I've hit a snag. The door closes OK, the gaps aren't even all round yet but that should just be a little adjusting. The problem comes when I open the door. It slides perfectly until it gets about 4" from fully open then stops abruptly. The obstruction seems to be on the bottom runner, but there is nothing obvious stopping it moving. If I unbolt the bottom bracket the runner runs fine in the grove, as do the other two runners, all the way to the end of their travel. It's odd, it's not like it gets progressively more difficult to move, it runs freely and then stops suddenly. Any ideas?!

[aec]

OK, this is really starting to drive me insane now.

I can see why the door is stopping from fully opening, towards the far end of the travel, the horizontal track of the lower runner track narrows slightly from the inside edge. The lower bracket is at such an angle in runner that it can't pass through the narrower channel at this point. To clear it, the lower bracket would need to be a a slightly greater angle.

Now, if the bracket was made of flimsy metal I could see the impact could have been bent to cause this problem. But the metal is not only about 3mm thick, it's also got a ridged profile which would make it very difficult to distort. For there have been enough energy to twist this bracket, I'd have expected far far greater damage to the door - I cant have been going faster than 2mph!

Thing is I really can't see what else it can be! I've taken some more shots of the upper and lower runners - do these look to be at the wrong angle? Problem is I didn't ever take much notice of how they looked before the smash!


The first one is looking inside the lower runner, from the back, at the point where the runner track narrows. The front corner of the lower bracket can't get past the narrowing point
[img:500:402]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3283/274 ... 533a96.jpg[/img]
Here's a couple of shots of the lower bracket. Does the angle look right?
[img:500:375]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3093/274 ... 901c90.jpg[/img]
[img:500:375]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2295/274 ... 4a2ddc.jpg[/img]
Finally the top bracket. I looks like it's leaning over, but again I can't see how there would have been enough force to bend this !
[img:500:375]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3178/274 ... 98377d.jpg[/img][/img]

[Rozzo]

i'd say that bottom bracket is bent as the lines just dont match. remember that a lot of bending could have taken place before you heard the bang and at 2mph 2 tonnes takes some stopping.
thankfully it looks easy to change and i'm sure someone on here will have that bracket if you place an ad in the wanted section

[Mocki]

both top and bottom are bent, they should both be 90 deg to the van.

[aec]

both top and bottom are bent, they should both be 90 deg to the van.

What I can't understand is that to bend they must have been bent around something. The areas they would have impacted against are the end of the lower track, and the edge of the upper door frame, both of these areas are fabricated out of thinner steel than the two brackets. At the bottom, the rubber end stop was pushed out (but this was held in by rust!) and there's no other damage. At the top there's a slight bend to the lip of the door surround (the sort of bending you get from a half-hearted whack with a hammer given the thickness of the steel)

Now, if those chunky brackets were originally square to the body then in order to produce that level of bend, I'd have expected some pretty major damage top and bottom where they impacted (i.e. the post totally fecked!!!).. but the damage is minimal....... it's a total mystery!!

[Plasticman]

aec, sorry to labour a point, you asked if they are bent , they are and youve been told so, how or why or how much force has or hasnt been used is of no importance,

they will both bend straight with very little effort.

Now Frame yourself!

By the way you take a good clear picky, have fun Mike

[aec]

aec, sorry to labour a point, you asked if they are bent , they are and youve been told so, how or why or how much force has or hasnt been used is of no importance,

they will both bend straight with very little effort.

Now Frame yourself!

Yeah, I know, I know. I'm not questioning what everyone else has said, they look bent to me too, but you understand I've done enough damage already and I want to be totally sure I'm doing the right thing before I start bending more metal, and because of the thickness of those two sections (top one is about 1.5mm, bottom one about 2mm I don't think they'll be that easy to bend, which brings me back to the question of how they got bent in the first place... oh no here we go again!!!

The wierd thing is, the door does everything else perfectly now apart from open that last few inches; the runners slide smoothly, the door shuts and opens just as easily as it did before, even the allignment now looks good.... it just doesn't add up.

Thanks everyone for you help on this one.


...just had another thought, doesn't explain the top one, but I wonder if the bottom backet is actually ok, but the inner door skin has been slighlty deformed, so that the angle the bracket mounts to it is no longer correct. That sounds a bit more plausable.

[KarlT]

Clipped the edge of the open door on the corner of the house, the house won.

Is that a property crash?

Sorry.