Door Hinge Spring Removal
Mark SimpsonDescription
Restoring a classic car usually means dealing with springs, which can lead to anger, frustration or even physical harm. When a spring’s potential energy is suddenly released the results can be unpredictable and instantaneous. Fortunately, there are tools for every job, and the ones designed for dealing with springs will tame these beasts.
While the springs in the door hinge of your classic car carry far less potential energy than your hood or suspension springs, they can still be equally troublesome to deal with. Large 2-door cars are prone to needing the door hinges serviced as the weight of the door wears out the bushings on the hinge pins. Unfortunately in order to service these bushing often the hinge spring needs to be removed. This can be a formidable task, but the right tool will make short work of it.
We join Mark Simpson in the shop where he demonstrates using a widely available and affordable spring compressor. In just a few moments the hinge spring can be safely removed as well as safely installed without much effort. We’re certain you’ll agree this is a “must-have” tool for any well equipped shop.
If you've got one of those cars with those big long two doors, let's say it's a Firebird or, uh, Cordoba or any of those big two door cars. You're used to having to grab the door and lift it up to get it to close. Right? Why? Because the hinges get worn out. Not the hinge necessarily itself. It's the bushings in the hinge. But in order to replace that on a lot of cars, there's these springs, these springs, a lot of guys will try to use screwdrivers and vice grips and all kinds of means to get these off and none of those are safe. So, the right way to do it is to use a spring compressor. This spring compressor is made by ST manufacturing 21900. I know you don't need to know that, but everybody always asks and, uh, they're relatively inexpensive, available at a lot of hardware stores or even, uh, auto parts stores. You simply slide that on. You could do this in the car on some, quite a lot of cars. In this case, we're gonna do it out here where you can actually see what we're doing A N it's just a matter of putting that spring compressor on and you want to get it good and tight and once you get it on there good and tight, you can usually pull spring right out. Now, you can safely pull the pin, replace the bushings and rebuild the rest of this hinge. And when it comes time to put the hinge back on, it's just as simple.
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