Removing doors for weatherstripping replacement - Part deaux

Saloons
1

Working on the passenger door as we had already done the drivers door weatherstripping. It is imperative, and yes it really sucks, to have to remove the entire door on a MK2 to replace the rubber door bits. Using a floor jack, music, refreshments and a lot of tears. we found that it took us over seven hours to do just the one door.

There is a floating captive plate within the door that you have to bolt 6 bolts into which hold the door on to the car. Do NOT mess with the four Pozi screws as you will go nowhere!

With the help of someone with VERY small hands; I had the beautiful Angela, you need to hold the captive plate steady and then push the six bolts through the hinge, into the door and into the captive plate which is constantly wiggling.

Once you have every bolt semi tight then the fun begins as you use a rubber mallet to convince the hinge back into the factory position by observing the rust lines! Gently shutting the door numerous times will allow you to use a floor jack to raise the entire door into position, re tighten the nuts and do this about four times until you get that famous Jaguar door thump.

This proves that Jaguar in Coventry hired people with miniature hands to do another task on their assembly lines.

Having this all completed I took the beast out for a romp up to 80MPH and somehow it is almost OK… More driving, more exhaust roar and everything will be OK. But wait, we still have the rear door to complete…

Gerard
Loveland, Colorado

2

Hello Gerard,
I hope some others will chime in here, but I will volunteer my experience. First, the front doors: To remove the doors in order to install new seals one must remove the doors with the hinges attached to the doors. This means unscrewing the two pozidrive screws in each hinge and removing the 5/16" bolt in the center of each hinge. You must also disconnect the wire to the hinge-mounted switch in the lower hinge for the interior lights. I then unscrewed the switch from the hinge. I also removed the grease zerk on each hinge to gain just a little more clearance but that is not a necessary step.

If you need to do some thread clean up on the captured steel mounting plates inside the doors now is the time. My front door plates have threaded inserts in the plate. With two of the three hinge bolts still tight and in place one can use a tap in the problem threaded hole and clean it up.

After seals are in place, as the manual states, installation is the reverse of above.

Rear doors: Again, door removal is the first step. However, while the lower hinge is the same as the front door hinges, the upper hinge is obviously different. The interior door handle, window crank and door card (panel) must be removed to gain access to the upper rear door hinge. The lower hinge is removed by loosening the two pozidrive screws, single 5/16" hex bolt and the interior light switch, just like on the front door.

On the upper hinge, I left the hinge attached to the B/C post and removed the four bolts in the hinge that attach to the door. You may have a shim or two or three between the hinge face and the door, so be careful as you loosen. Again if you have some corrupted threads in the captured steel plate behind the hinges, now is the time to clean them up. As with the front, tighten a few of the hinge bolts so the threaded plate is firmly held in place and then do your thread work. When you reassemble, be sure to get the shims back in place and you will see that you have considerable adjustment capability with that upper hinge to get your door gaps correct.

Two little tips: while one person can probably do this job, it is MUCH easier with another pair of hands. In fact, if you are reinstalling the doors and need to protect your paint along the gaps, three people might be advisable. Even better if you have a jack designed for mounting doors! Of course, tape your edges to help prevent paint damage. Putting anti-seize on the screw and bolt threads will help to avoid cross-threading and will also make it much easier to remove screws at a later date. Although clearly none of us wish to ever do this job again!

I hope others will edit this to provide guidance to others undertaking this task. I am certainly no expert. My thoughts are just based on removing and installing the doors a couple of times.
Lin

3

I managed to install the seals without removing the doors after getting advice on this forum a couple of years ago.

I drilled out the pop rivets holding the thin steel strips forming the channel. I glued the new seal to them. Once nice and set I applied glue to the body parts of the channel and ( with some difficulty) put them back. New pop rivets. Job done. Now the front worked out really well. The rear doors were a lot harder to get to stick. Hard to get a good grip with the glue to hold the seal neatly in place. It was acceptable though.

Cheers.
Dave

4

I used 3M double face tape on cleaned surfaces.