Just bought a 1996 Ford F-150 XL. Great truck, but the doors rattle when I go over bumps in the road. Is there a quick fix or do i need new doors?

I know the doors rattle and the inside where the door handles are rattles as well.

Thanks for any advice.

Rodney

 

mine rattled when i first got it but rplaceing the door striker bolts fixxed it.

Striker bolts are on the door frame. it's the stud that the door latches too when closed

 

there's a plastic sleeve on the striker bolt that breaks off over time. there is a kit you can buy in the help section of your auto parts store. you remove the stricker, replace the sleeve, then insatl the striker, and adjust it til the door closes right. might also want to look at replaceing the weatherstrip around the door, as when it wears, it allows the door to come in too far, and air to come in while you are going down the road

 

Bad hinge busings will allow the door to sag and cause a lot of noise due to missalignment.

With the door open, grab it from the edge and see if you can shake it up and down. If you can then you might need new bushings.

 

Those are all possibilities, but I will tell you how I accidentally fixed the door rattling problem on my 80. I had taken the bed off and was replacing the frame crossmembers with ones I got from a junkyard frame. You can't tell it by looking at it, but the crossmember under the rear of the cab had rusted out right beneath the large rubber bushings that support the cab. You can see the perfectly round hole that was beneath the bushing in this picture. This is actually the "new" crossmember I was installing, so I had to patch it.



That large round hole is actually supposed to be about 1/2" diameter, not 3 inches in diameter. When I got all this fixed, like magic the doors didn't rattle anymore. Apparently the whole back part of the cab was bouncing up and down.

 

Gee, I'll bet thats the left side ...

I got a core support bracket that looks just like it.

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

a cheap way to fix old weather stripping is to cut a small slot in part of the stripping and slide something inside of the tube part of the stripping( like a piece of an old extension cord or something like that) it will seal that baby up just fine... for free!

 

Thanks for all your help fellow forders! I will post results soon. Thanks again.

 

might be able to take a torx head socket and loosen up the pin that sticks out from the body. it does move and can be adjusted, if you cant adjust it back far enough tighten it back down and smack it with a BFH...had to do that on my doors now they fit fine.

 

LOL.

Somehow, the BFH approach never works for me...

 

I have the same problem with the passenger door of my 82 F-100. Thanks for the advice everyone!