I bought this door dolly last week after fighting with the drivers door on this cab. I did the usual, finger tighten the hinge bolts and then attempt to get rough alignment on the door. The door was being a real PITA and I was having a hard time holding it in place and trying to work the bolts. So I get this door dolly and I can't believe that I have gone this many years without one. Mount the door on the dolly and then slip it over the hinges, adjust the height and lock it down...one person job, nice!

Well I thought it was nice until I tried to screw in the bolts on the bottom hinge. Not only do they NOT line up with the floating nut plate, the holes in the hinge don't even line up with the holes in the door hinge pocket. It looks like the hinge itself is about 1/2 inch too short. Anybody ever seen that before? The hinges came out of a box of hinges I keep for jobs like this so I can't say that this particular hinge was ever on a truck of this vintage but it sure didn't look any different than all the rest of them when I had it laying on the table for paint. Maybe the hinge pocket in the door jamb is depressed, I'll have to check that tomorrow. Without that door dolly I probably would have been cussing this thing til Labor Day!

 

That's a nice tool ... I was just fighting with my door today using a floor jack.. with 1 person its tough to get it right.

 

Charlie,
Where'd you get the door dolly?

 

The dolly is made by Brut Mfg near Canton, Ohio. I found it listed online at various tool supply houses but ended up buying it direct from Brut via ebay.
DD77 Brut Door Dolly Portable Lift Cart Body Shop Tool | eBay

 

Thanks,
Sure helps to have some help when you work by yourself.

 

I bought this tool to hold the door while I fitted it to the cab, it wasn't until I placed the door on the dolly and locked it in place that I realized how nice it really was...I wheeled the door/dolly over to the cab and cranked it up til the hinges were lined up and voila...I just slid the door over the hinges without any cussing and no damage whatsoever to the door, the cab, or to myself. I am still grinning!

Brut makes a number of body shop tools right here in the US...I like the tools and I like that they are made here but I can't afford many of the ones that I would use. This dolly however is well worth the money for me.

 

Nice tool! Their other stuff looks good too. Thanks for sharing.

 

I had seen this tool for holding a door in another thread, here https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...l#post14155892

There was another thread, which I can't find now, where someone built their own version of that tool, very cool.

Jeff

 

I have too been fighting my drivers door,now for about 2 weeks. I have tried about everything. Floor jacks, blocks of wood using shims, plain old lift up the lower end, finger tighten the top hinge bolts then tighten the lower ones, on and on it goes. I looked up the price on this, and it's around $450. I'm getting so tired of this, I might just pop for one. But that's a lot of money for something I will probably use just once. Does anybody rent those?

 

I hear ya...I work on these trucks all the time and I had a tough time digging deep to buy this tool. What I can say is that, while I bought this dolly with the intent to use it to align doors, I have found that it works great just to remove/replace doors even if you have the hinges indexed and do not need to realign them. It also holds the door securely and is very easy to roll around...nice features when you have the door removed to do other work on the truck. How many times have we opted not to remove a door, even though it would make the job so much easier if it was out of the way, because it was such a PITA to do the R&R on the door? With this tool it's a snap and the door can stay on the dolly until you are ready to reinstall. I don't have much room in my garage so if I can work on the cab without having to work around an open door then I'm a happy guy. When was the last time you replaced your door weatherstripping? I know that many of us have done the job without removing the door(s), trying to work the stripping in place around the hinges without sticking the glued rubber in the wrong place. This job just got a lot easier... pop off the door leave it on the dolly, replace the weatherstripping and reinstall the door exactly the way it came off the cab. Kinda sound like a salesman but when get a tool that makes your life this much easier then it's easy to promote. I thought that my Jawhorse was good, this dolly is pretty close.

 

Here is one you can build for you floor jack probably for less than $100, maybe for nothing depending on what you have laying around your shop.

Sorry, it's from a Chevy board scroll down to post 6

door dolly - The 1947 - Present Chevrolet & GMC Truck Message Board Network

Found the one from our Own Board, It is by MP&C the post was on the metal meet forum http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/showp...&postcount=559

 

It might be a Chevy forum but at least the guy had the good taste to be working on a Ford Fairlane! He probably got more grief from the Chevy guys for that than you would from the Blue Oval folks here.

That looks like a nice solution for the issue of lifting the door away from the car and back again. That is a more refined method of doing what most of us do with a floor jack when it comes to this task. Where I find that setup lacking is that with the jack support on the inner door jamb you cannot fit the door to the opening to hold it there while you are aligning the gaps.

 

Good catch! I hadn't even noticed the vehicle make/model when looking at the photos.

 

So did you get your hinge alignment problem sorted, Charlie?

 

Thanks Charlie!

As you have shown, with out a doubt. there are a lot of good reasons to own one. There's an old saying that you have just proven is true.....The cost is soon forgotten, if the job gets done right!