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? for those with removeable doors

F

FatXJ

NAXJA Forum User
Location
South Range, MI
I took my doors off a couple days ago and went wheeling today. The problem is that it takes forever to unbolt the hinges from the door and then to reattach looks like it will be a hassle too.

So I was thinking I could buy pins to put in the hinges so I could pull them off faster, or I also thought about cutting the lower plate off the hinge and welding a bolt to the upper plate so that i could drop the door on the hinge and then put a nut on it to hold it in place.

What did you all do? Also how the heck did you get the roll pin out of the hinge? I have tried everything but a press to get them out and have accomplished nothing.
 
I haven't done it yet, But i've seen PLENTY of people cut the lower eye off of the door side of the hinge. so all you have to do is open the door and lift up.

unless you're wheelin' on the moon, there's no need to spin a nut on the bottom to hold it on.

I'm probably just going to cut my roll pin through the separations of the hinge and then drill it out of the top of the door.
 
I cut the lower part of my hinge, so the doors just lift off. On my XJ the drivers side pins were pressed in from the top and the pass side fromt he bottom. So I trimmed down the drivers side and kept them, used bolts fro the pass side. If you're going to cut the hinge, the easiest way to do it would be to unbolt the doors again (since you already did that once, the doors proabably aren't perfectly aligned), and cut the lower part of the hinge. Then you can seperate the hinge and trim all the excess off the pin. Bolt the hinges to the dorrs and put the doors back on. It's easier adjusting the door position by removing it to position the hinge, at least I think it is. My drivers side hinge pin and the bolts for the pass side aren't even long enough to get a nut on. Any longer and I couldn't get the doors on and off. If the hinge pin or bolt is too long then when you try to lift the door off it will hit the fender or a-pillar (can't remember which off the top of my head), and the door won't come off or go back on.
 
We actually have a write up on this subject right here on the NAXJA site. It is in our Tech Repository section

http://www.naxja.org/techArticles.html

It is called Doorless Writeup
By Jay "Trail Blazer" Nikola

Pretty Good Article about what he did.

Happy Wheelin
DurangoXJ
NAXJA Memeber #432
 
I slotted the lower front hinges so I can leave the pin in place on the door. In the top hinge, I use a quick release pin. For the rears I cut off the lower ear of each/door side, because full height pins can not pass through the hinges because of door sheetmetal.
Welding a pin in the lower ear of each hinge is a good idea. I wanted to modify the front hinges as little as possible, I had little choice with the rears. I can rtemove all four doors in about a minute. Putting them on takes a few minutes more, thank God I don't have pw's and dl's, only speakers.
Now it's time to fab some tube doors!
 
CheapXJ said:
I haven't done it yet, But i've seen PLENTY of people cut the lower eye off of the door side of the hinge. so all you have to do is open the door and lift up.
Click to expand...

I urge you to do it this way; I did mine a long time ago when not many had done it before, so I literally unbolted everything and had to get it all to line back up - which was next to impossible, so my doors don't sit like they use to. Cut the lower part of the door side hinge off and make them lift-able. And please don't cut and splice the wires in the doors; if you remove the "kick panels under the dash by your feet, you'll notice the wires leading in from the doors. Here, they plug into another harnass so all you need to do is unplug them from the harnass and feed them back through the pillars.

I've got a mess on my hands with the wiring. I think I'm gonna hafta call Rossor Jeep and order 2 new door-to-pillar harnasses and ditch the ones I cut up.:anon:
 
Listen to economos....I've had mine done for about a year. Cut the bottom part of the hinge off just as he said. I then found all those removable harness's under the kick panel. You do not need to cut ANY wires, even speakers wires, however I relocated mine into the kick panel anyway.
 
thanks for the info

I don't have power locks or windows so the wiring wasn't an issue especially since I knew the speaker connector was there. I removed most of the plastic trim so access to wires is easy.

I guess I will be cutting the hinges off as soon as I can get the weather to cooperate, it's 70 today and by wednesday they say mid 30's and snow :mad:

I will have to get the roll pins out because I have one broken already and they aren't it great shape so a solid pin looks to be my answer, I can then put a cotter pin in it to hold it in place for those moments of airtime.
 
I only had speakers in the doors. What I did was relocate them to the liftgate. They screwer right in and my XJ had the connectors for speakers there anyways. This way I don't have to deal with any wires int he doors, and can listen to my stereo with the doors off (only have two speakers, good enough).

For the door ajar buzzer there is a connector behind the kick panels that feeds four wires into the buzzer switch in the door jamb. Just disco the connector to disable the buzzer. It will disable the door ajar buzzer, dome light, and headlight buzzer. You can reconnect it with the doors on and everything works fine.
 
I used an angle grinder to take the lower portion of the hing off ... with the door off of course :D.

As for the pins, only one punched out in my case so I had to use a hacksaw blade by hand to chop the others into smaller pieces. The smaller pieces punched out easily.


You might want to consider re-locating your speakers down to the kickpanels.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/64838123/64838216wDiqpU

Having no music all summer long can really be terrible... especially if you're a bad singer like myself
 
air powered cutting wheel did it very quickly, it's soft metal. Oh imporant note...wash the jeep off after you cut. It's a lot of metal shavings, that I neglected to wash off, and the next rain showed rust specks all over my hood. It's not noticable until you get up close, but you will notice it all the time and hate yourself for it. A compounding took some out, but not all. :)
 
Speakers, I don't need no stinking speakers.

I have 6x9's in the rear hatch so it works enough even though I can hardly hear them over the exhaust noise and wind rushing by. I don't listen to music while wheeling anyway unless I'm sitting and watching the action.
 
FatXJ said:
I took my doors off a couple days ago and went wheeling today. The problem is that it takes forever to unbolt the hinges from the door and then to reattach looks like it will be a hassle too.

So I was thinking I could buy pins to put in the hinges so I could pull them off faster, or I also thought about cutting the lower plate off the hinge and welding a bolt to the upper plate so that i could drop the door on the hinge and then put a nut on it to hold it in place.

What did you all do? Also how the heck did you get the roll pin out of the hinge? I have tried everything but a press to get them out and have accomplished nothing.
Click to expand...

I have a '95 and mine wasn't a roll pin... it was a steel pin that was pressed into the hinge. I took a thin cutting wheel on an air saw and cut the pin in between the hinges (after removing the door to gain access). Once I cut the top and bottom the 2 sides of the hinge seperated. The bottom of the pin came out fairly easy, but the top was a real PITA! I had to get it red hot with a torch and then pound it out with the BFH (Make sure it doesn't land in your shoe when it finally comes out ;)). After that, I put the 2 sides back together w/ a 1/4" bolt and put the door back on. Now I can take my door off just by removing the bolt.
 
XJ Door Removal

I just read the post on door removal, and it sounds and looks great. My question is, under XJ rules and regulations with NAXJA, is the stock seat belts acceptable with door removal? It would appear that installing new seat belts with a criss-cross design (sorry I do not know the name of the better performance belts), would be a good idea, even if they are not required. I know that this modification is becoming more and more popular, but I would like to know what the safety requirements are for this design, so that when I show up at Moab this year I wont be unprepared....
Thank you,

Casper
 
Are you refering to 5 point harnesses? I've been considering them when I replace my seats,but does anyone know if you would you be able to run just the lap belts? For most of the stuff I do, there is no need to be fully strapped in, and I would think it would be quicker to throw on a lap belt running from one section to another than to put on a full harness. Also, witout a roll cage, is it safe to install something like that? With a standard lap/shoulder belt, you can still lean down and in to protect yourself if the roof gives way, where with the 5 point you're pretty much SOL.
 
DurangoXJ said:
We actually have a write up on this subject right here on the NAXJA site. It is in our Tech Repository section

http://www.naxja.org/techArticles.html

It is called Doorless Writeup
By Jay "Trail Blazer" Nikola

Pretty Good Article about what he did.

Happy Wheelin
DurangoXJ
NAXJA Memeber #432
Click to expand...

Why are these tech articles limited to NAXJA Members?!:mad:
 
Gots to have some reason to get people to be a member. There's a wealth of free information on NAXJA, it only makes sense that we keep some of it for members only.
 
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