Hello, Hope everybody’s having a good week so far. My 1971 has the pretty common door SAG on the driver side, wondering if it’s better to track down a original factory hinge or buy a reproduction one? I’m inclined that a good used factory one is probably the better way to go but for all I know there could be improvements made in the aftermarket ones at this point.
Any guidance to offer?
Thanks!
Rebuild your hinge with a kit from WCCC.
Good morning Al, thank you for the response. Do the hinges themselves where, which is my understanding, or is it just depends themselves that we are out?
I freely admit I may be thinking about this the wrong way.
The repro hinges look good but I find them harder to get into adjustment and do not think they hold up as well as FoMoCo. If yours are beyond rebuilding good cores are pretty easy to come by, my guess is someone on this site would sell a complete set of four for $100. The lower drivers is the valuable one of the four.
Fifty years ago someone had the foresight to keep making the hinge wear out parts replaceable… The bushings and the pin have a part number that dates from the 50s, so maybe it wasn’t foresight so much as the accountants not yet forbidding something so logical and economical. So unless your pins are worn through the bronze bushings and into the steel I would use the rebuild kit. Even if they were worn through I would still try it.
Thank you all very much for the discussion and background info.
Sounds like my starting point, going on the assumption it us the pin rather than the hinge, should be;
Door Hinge Pin Kit - Late 1968 + - Repro
Reproduction Door Hinge Pin Kit for the Late 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 & 1973 Mercury Cougar.
These are for the Stamped Steel hinge plates. not the earlier cast metal plates.
early 1968 had cast uppers and stamped lowers.
1967 had cast for both.
4
Item #: 19406
EDIT: Opps - think I need the rebuild kit rather than the one above.
OR - should I just pop for the top hinge as well and just do it once and be done with it? Leaning towards this approach.
Thanks!
I rebuilt the hinges in my 70 using the hinge rebuilt kit from Steve’s Mustangs. If originality is not critical, these work well. Kits are total overkill but won’t ever sag. Does require opening up pivot holes in the original hinges and welding in a collar. Works for hinges where the pins wore into the pivot holes too . Not too bad as far as fabrication work and they do work nicely. are even greaseable.
OLD POST - RELAVENT TO ME TODAY…
I own a 'built in ‘67’ 1967 Cougar. This means that it was the early version before Fomoco retooled in December… and in the case of the lower door hinge - they revised the design after my build. I have the older heavy casting piece.
I have about 90K miles on my car - I’m the 3rd owner since 1978 - quite a clean vehicle, garaged a good bit of it’s life and now with fresh paint. The symptoms were some of the time (as I now know when the pin bushing for the cam would align to the bushing flat spot) - some of the time it took a moderate amount of force to get the door opening started with a loud pop. Clearly overdue for hinge replacement/overhaul, but I caught it early enough the only damaged part was the pin bushing that contacts the cam - good news.
I saw the video posted above and called my ‘other brother Darryl’ at WCCC. Per our chat I ordered the rebuild kit with the tool rental.
Today my bud and I took the lower hinge out of the car. Sure enough, some modest wear on the hinge cam pin bushing - no other issues. The pin holding the cam was not sloppy at all.
I started with that pin, leaving the roller bushing pin alone. We had to use a good bit of heat to be able to drive it out (expanding the diameter of the casting to enable a more relaxed interference fit). I thought, since the piece is already heated - let’s drive the new one in before it all cools down. To repeat - this is not the pin that holds the bushing where the cam rolls. It took a bit more than my vice wanted to squeeze so we backed up and reassessed. Pounding with a heavy hammer was a challenge. The interference fit between the uncompressed raised splines and the old pin’s compressed splines was maybe another 0.007 inches. Being a retired ME with a lot of field experience, that explained why the challenge. The pin may have been inserted perhaps 1/4 to 1/3 of the length before we aborted assembly making sure I wasn’t going to damage anything.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Checking all related parts, The new cam and pin boss are quite a bit sloppier than my existing OEM pieces. The shape is also different in the cam profile to where there will be a spot in opening travel where there will be quite the peak of resistive loading to move the door. Slightly discouraging. I decided, what the heck - I’ll try and re-use my old pin and cam (the new pin and old cam were not a good diametrical fit).
Then came getting the pin with the bushing out of the casting. Unlike the cam pin, where you can use a punch to drive from the bottom - there’s no hole below it to insert a punch and hammer it out. It’s pressed into a blind hole. Both of us (experienced engineers with huge hand’s on experience) struggled to figure out a way to remove the pin. With my well established home garage (including a 9000 # Rotary 11’ asymmetrical lift) - I have concluded pulling that upper pin out of the casting exceeds my tooling. At worst, I’ll need to carefully drill down the center of the pin, then gradually increase the drill bits to where the wall thickness of the surrounding pin shell will allow me to somehow pull it out (how??? heat, vice grips???).
I’m now at the point I may wish to go with an aftermarket complete hinge, like the design change starting in after the December retooling for '67 and spanning '68. Some postings state that’s a nicer feel in the opening and closing.
What say y’all?? Anyone have experience rebuilding this unit? Unfortunately WCCC was closed today. I’m on a bit of a compressed timeline since I’m leaving town for 2 weeks on the 14th or 15th. Anyone changed from the earlier casting like me to the later one? WCCC denigrates their own aftermarket one in the video, so I’m inclined to order a Scott Drake complete hinge from alternate suppliers since I’ve had good luck with their quality.
Please chime in, and thanks!
I always rebuild original hinges (68 on) I use Auveco pins & bushings.
The ones I use are bigger than factory, and usually work on hinges with damaged holes, as they are bigger & require drilling out the hole a bit. I cut the pin to length & weld it to hinge so it wont come out.
Unfortunately I’ve got the older cast piece design for the lower hinge. After trying to use heat yesterday on the casting (400+ degrees) and vice-grips on the top of the pin, it wouldn’t move. My dog destroyed my machinists’ handbook, but I remembered to get a difference of expansion between pin and hole of, say - 0.005" - that’s alot of temperature. Drilling and extracting is not worth my effort.
I’ve chosen to order a Scott Drake hinge. I’ll likely rebuild the upper one assuming I can get the pins out of it. First, however I’ve got to swap the lower.
