Door Hinges.

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In preparation for our trip to Alaska in May, Scott decided to renew the door hinges. So yesterday we spent a frustrating hour or two working out how they should be assembled and be fitted. Peter's Javelin has had its doors expertly fitted by Chris so we thought that would be the easiest to look at. However the hinges Scott had brought over did not match. I had ordered from JCS some 'new' ones with pins and balls . Scott had his old ones mounted on new pins and balls from Bill Lock.
Anyhow we then went to look at the other Javelin shell and then Amy's Javelin. The problem was that Chris had fitted the upper hinge assembly to the 'wrong' side of the car. I say wrong because it did not match Scott and Amy's fitting. But in my opinion the arrangement is better because the front door (which is used more) pivots on the upper and lower ball in the upper hinge, whereas in the 'correct' way it pivots on just the upper ball and I think this will create more wear as the pin rotates and the spring will eat into the aluminium of the post hinge.
Food for thought. Have you any deliberations on the matter?

Have a look at TOPIC this Gallery album.

Whilst doing this some rules evolved. Each ball has a spherical and a conical half. The conical half points upwards, check this mates with the hinge to which it should fit.
The new JCS pins do not have a slot to take the tab of the lock washer but instead are fitted with a nylock nut.

A washer goes between nut and spring , but should there be a washer on top of the spring so as to reduce wear in the lower hinge?

The hinges should be assembled with grease and regularly serviced!

Is brass a better material for the hinges and balls? I found one hinge with a stress crack after sand blasting that would quickly fail.
Should brass balls be fitted to aly hinges?

To check for wear you need some new balls! Make sure that when placed into the hinge the 'equator' is at least 1mm above the hinge, so that there is a gap (at least 2mm) when the two hinges are fitted together. Of course, make sure the sphere and cone are the correct way around. If this is the case, the hinges should show little movement when assembled and the nut tightened up. Exactly how much tightening is debatable but the spring should have some free movement.

[Keith Clements]

Scott reported that the new hinges' holes were not correctly drilled.



So I put an original assembled hinge onto the mill and measured all the relevant centre points. Note some of the measurements here should have a minus sign!
All dimensions in inches. The measuring tool is good for 5 decimal places but my eye to about one! However, I am happy to give the rounded measurements to two decimal places (1/100th inch).

The X datum seemed to move for this.


One way of checking the alignment is to put the nearside and offside hinges together aligned in a vice. All 8 holes should align in the top pair and the bottom pair.


Note I found the brass Nearside Lower Front was a little bit out of alignment as it was not original.