So a couple years ago I picked up two pretty good doors from a pull and pay. Well yesterday I started the process of switching out the internals from my current door to the donor doors. Have a few questions now.

Here's the doors in question



Much to my dismay, found some fairly significant rust at the bottom inside seam. None of it has come through on the outside bottom of the door, just the inside has some rust. I used my angle grinder with a wire brush to remove some of the rust, then used a rust converter and primered over it. Anything else you guys can think of to remove/minimize the rust?







Here's some pics after treating with converter, and primer, should I do anything else?





Now on to my second question. The old drivers side door, the window regulator is riveted in, and I removed the regulator while at the pull and pay from the donor door which had bolts holding it's regulator in. Can I just drill out the rivets and get some bolts to hold the regulator in? Any ideas would be helpful.

Some time ago, I also picked up the on cab weatherstripping from a 90's Ford which has the metal rib which fits around the lip much better than the rubber by itself stripping. Someone asked what do do about the bottom portion since there isn't a lip for the stripping to slip over. Well what I did was took some pliers and bent the metal so it would lay flat on the bottom of the cab, and then when I put the aluminum door strips back on that will hold the weatherstripping in place.




I'd also appreciate any tips or tricks to switching out doors, as I'm doing this by myself, thanks guys.

 

I drilled out the rivets in mine and used bolt's out of the donor. I find it's not to bad swapping door's if I pull the fender off so that I can hold the door up & shut it then the striker hold's it in place.

 

So when you drilled out the rivets does the regulator have threads in it for the bolts to thread into?

Never mind, I see now that there's plenty of clearance for a bolt and a nut.

 

I used the bolt in one when I put my doors back together.

 

Well pretty much finished up swapping out my drivers side door with the donor from the pull and pay. Just need to install new anti-rattle felts. Swapped out all the internals from the old door to the new door. Now that I think about it, it would have been much easier in regards to time to have just paid the extra money from the pull and pay to leave the internals in the donor door rather than taking time to remove internals from old door, cleaning them up, and painting. Live and learn I suppose.



Old door: Lots of rust, and bondo and saw JB weld through old mirror bolt holes on inside of door.



Donor door shell after getting it mounted and aligned.

Before

After


Here's the window regulator. I soaked it for a few hours in CLR to remove the surface rust, and then primered the regulator.




I neglected to take pictures of the locking mechanism, I cleaned it up as best I could, thinking of a way to be able to take them apart and clean them up really well. The old plastic latch rod keepers were brittle and broke when I was removing locking mechanism. Picked up some new ones at a Ford dealer. I looked on JBG.com and what they had didn't look anything like these ones. Here's the part number if anyone wants to get some from Ford E1DZ-5421952-A. Was $7.44 for 6 clips.



Here's the door handle. CLR cleans up the chrome really well, as well as removing the rust on the inside mounting plate. I primered the steel mounting plate, and bought stainless nuts at ACE Hardware to remount it to door.



Completed door (minus window runs). Shuts really tightly with the 90's steel ribbed weatherstripping from pull and pay. Can't wait to start on the passenger side.

 

look's good. I'm about to swap my driver's door out some time this weekend. so dumb question but what did you do about swapping your VIN plate from the old door to the new one? I ask because thats the only reason I haven't swapped my drivers door's yet on my 77 and I need to figure it out since I swapped bodies on my 76 and at the moment it has no VIN plate on it

 

Definitely not a dumb question. Simply removed VIN plate from old door, and still have to rivet it in place on the new door. From inside of door, just use something to push against rivet from inside, I used a hammer, and then used vice grips to grab onto rivet on outside of door, and pulled, there's not much holding them in there.

 

so your going to use your factory rivet's to put back in it? That can work on my 77 but the rivets on my 76 have been drilled out. I'm just trying to avoid issue's in case I ever get D.O.T. inspected with this truck.

 

No, just plan on using new rivets, can't imagine there would be an issue just by using newer rivets. Here in Colorado, there aren't mandatory vehicle inspections anymore. If a policeman pulls you over, then they can check stuff like cracked windshields stuff like that, but I don't think anyone would cause a stink over the VIN plate, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

Yeah I'm not sure how it work's on th erivet issue. I've heard it both way's.

 

Did you end up removing the fenders for this project? I need to replace my passenger door.... The skin separated on the leading edge and I rather not half *** tack weld it.

 

you dont have to take the fenders off no. I personally think it makes it easyer for myself to do it alone if the fender is atleast unbolted and pulled out of the way so I can use teh door strickewr to holkd the door in place while I bolt the hinge to the body. I for unknown reasons always leave the hinge on the door when I take them off

 

Kevin Marti www.martiauto.com and AMK Products www.amkproducts.com have the special rivets for the warranty plate.
Here are the ones I got from Marti.

 

Hi Mike,

Thank you for that info, I'll be contacting them to see how much they are.