Okay everyone I’m hoping someone can shed some light on my situation. On my 1992 F150, the passenger door rattled horribly. I replaced the striker bolt and bushing and the damn door wouldn’t even close. Went back to the old bolt with the new bushing but the door still moves in and out AND won’t close all the way. When I open the door and take the striker bolt with bushing and push it into the door latch, the latch will not engage and hold on the deeper, smaller diameter section. When I remove the bushing still have the same problem. I can not for the life of me find a replacement door latch I can only find a replacement cable. Has anyone else had this problem or know how to fix it?

 

Just went through this recently myself. The Dorman replacement parts seem to be a few thousandths too big and jam up in the latch. At least that's my assumption since I can only measure the new ones. Can't get a good read on the old ones because they're broken.
But they are available new from Ford still if I'm not mistaken, so that's my next move if I even want to bother. Mine does not rattle like yours (much) so it's not driving me crazy. And I might try to make a new bushing with info from some of the discussions hereabouts.
I did tighten up the linkages and stuff while I was in the passenger side though, and adjusted anything that was adjustable. It's much quieter on that side now.

What new bushing? Did you make one, or were you able to buy one somewhere and install it somehow? There have been some great discussions around here on how to fix the old broken striker bushings, but I have not tried them yet.
If the bushings and striker are correct, are you sure yours is adjusted properly now? Would it close before, but not now? Did the rattling change at all? Are the door rubber weatherstrips in good shape enough to put outward tension on the latch like they're supposed to?

Haven't done one on our vintage trucks yet, but I've had fantastic luck fixing old door latches by just super-cleaning them and then re-lubing them with some good synthetic water resistant grease.
I know mine (a '93 SuperCab) are a bit tight, so manipulating the latch like you're doing is actually kind of hard, but in my case I can still get them to latch fully. In your case, I think it would be very worthwhile to remove the latch and give it a good once-over.
Cleaning old gunk out and lightly lubing it temporarily (to keep the mess to a minimum) would let you run it through it's paces out on the work bench to see if anything is bent or mis-aligned. I've fixed stuck latches before just by bending some tabs that were out of shape and blocking movement of the rest of the "clock works" in the latch assembly. I say clock works because these things are often WAY over-complicated for their job. Not that I mind though! They do seem to do good work when they're working right.

Good luck.

Paul

 

Paul,

sorry I wasn’t clear but what I ended up doing was using the original ford bolt and the new Dorman bushing. That gets the door closed but the door sticks out like a 1/4” even when I slam it shut. Now, if I push on the door the gap goes away but as soon as I let off the door it pops right back out. The crazy part is I don’t have any problems with my driver’s side door and there is no bushing! Let me try very lightly sanding down the bushing and installing the new bolt and I’ll let you know. I’ll also look at possibly removing the latch and cleaning it up. I have a junkyard close by I even thought about trying to salvage a decent latch since the only ones I can find online are like $175 plus. I’ll do some other troubleshooting and keep you posted.

 

Wow, 175 for an old school latch? Guess I've been asleep for awhile. But I'm sure glad I don't need one right now either!
We sell latches for the Early Broncos for $60 bucks. I think they're repurposed Mustang latches though, because they're not exact copies of the originals. But they work at least...

Ok, I see what you were doing. I didn't think you could even get the individual pieces apart. But it still might be the new bushing that's causing all the trouble.
And since you're doing this, I assume you know all about the different adjustment aspects? The striker plate has quite a range of adjustment to let it come out far enough to double-latch, or go far enough in to pull the door tight against the seals. Figured you knew this but thought I'd bring it up anyway.
Some of what you describe is still consistent with a striker post/bolt/thingy being slightly out of adjustment.

Anyway, hopefully a little more tweaking will get you there. Let us know if sanding them down does any good and how you did it. I may do that since I still have the recently purchased strikers. Pretty sure that my local store will let me return them as defective, but didn't want to do that to them if there was a better solution. They're so close!

Thanks

Paul

 

Paul,

I had no idea I could adjust the strike plate. All I did was remove the old bolt and install the new bolt. I’ll have to look up how to make those adjustments to see if that helps. Thanks for the info and I’ll keep you posted.

 

You just loosen the bolt and slide it up, down, in or out to where you think it will work and tighten it down. When I get close, I barely loosen the bolt and tap it with a hammer slightly to get the fine adjustments. Try moving yours out about 1/4" and try it.

 

What yardbird said.
Moving it outward becomes a fine line between adjusted and having the door stick out proud of the body when closed.
Moving it inward becomes a fine line for the door being recessed and maybe even being too far to latch (which could be your issue?).
But up and down is pretty straightforward as you watch the body line when the door is closed. In this aspect, aligned is aligned and you'll know it when the door lines line up with the body lines.

Paul

 

Post deleted - other posts saying the same thing were posted while I was typing this post.

 

Huge shoutout to everyone that posted! IT’S FIXED!! I ended up sanding down the plastic bushing in the Dorman kit. I don’t have a caliper to tell you exactly how much I removed but I took the old bolt that had some of the old bushing on it, pushed the new bushing onto the old bolt, stuck the bolt in a power drill and let it rip! I used a flap disc because that’s all I had but a sanding block would work the same. I just kept sanding until I could get the new bolt and bushing to engage completely, then installed the new bolt, bracket/guide and retaining washer into the door frame. I do see the “nut” in the door frame has some play in it so when you bolt it down you just keep moving it in and out until the door sits flush With the cab. Then just check the up and down by slowly opening the door to feel for a drop. Once you feel no drop and the door is flush nice tight seal. I’m going to take it for a spin to confirm but I couldn’t shake the door to save my life! Thank you again to everyone that posted and I hope this helps you all out!

 

Umm... That doesn’t sound right to me. The door should not “drop.” It sounds like you have worn out hinges. Well at least the upper hinge.

With the door halfway open and then check again with the door fully open: lift up on the back edge of the door. Any up and down movement means the hinge is worn.

 

I've never checked a then-new door on one of our trucks, but for sure some vehicles actually have some little bit of slop right from the factory. So there can be drop if the pin is adjusted too high to begin with.
Now, on our trucks I'll defer to those that know. If there is slop, and that means the hinge is worn, hopefully it's not too much and you can still get years of good service from them before needing a change. My '93 has quite a bit of slop, but they don't drop from a proper adjusted height.

I hear what you're saying about using the drop as your adjustment point trhert, but truly the proper adjusted point is (or at least should be to my mind) when the body and matching door lines are properly lined up with each other. If that happens to coincide with no dropping of the door, great!
If it's a noticeable drop however (like more than 1/8" or so) then your hinges are certainly worn and should be put on "the list" for next go round.
But if it's just barely discernible from the latch point, I personally don't get worried about it until I start to see more drop when I open the door.

Good luck! Hope it's just a teeny bit, or none. And that when they're adjusted to your satisfaction, the body lines are perfect.
Still and all though, I'm most excited about the no-rattle aspects so far!

Paul