If there’s a single complaint I have about my daily driver, it’s the hinges on it. You see, I drive a Jeep Wrangler. The hinges are not hidden on them, like they are on most vehicles.
While this image doesn’t highlight the issues I have with the hinges, the following ones will. The issue relates to how Jeeps were assembled. The problem has been mitigated with the new model, called the JL.
The body on the vehicle is steel, but the hinges are aluminum. The entire body is assembled before it is painted. Due to reasons that are entirely beyond my understanding, this bi-metal situation causes oxidation. The oxidation leads to the paint bubbling and coming off, which is exactly what is happening in my case.
My first resort was to just find replacements. This way I could just replace a part, and not have to worry about alignment issues or have any downtime. The down side is that a new set of hinges for all 4 doors would be $480, just for the ones that mount to the doors. The ones that mount on the body are $352. Pretty damn expensive!
So today I started on this years long quest that has been stewing in my brain. This is the lower hinge on the driver rear door.
I’ve owned a Jeep since the end of 2015, and taking the doors off has always made me nervous. I’ve read numerous horror stories about people having significant troubles removing them; then not being able to put them back on. The ease at to which I was able to remove this hinge makes me believe I won’t have the troubles I thought I might. Perhaps I can give my little girl a thing she wanted finally. To drive around without doors.
My next step was removing the paint, and the oxidation that has built up over the years. For that, I got my wire wheel and new drill out. That alone removed a vast majority of the paint and all of the oxidation. Some of the paint was very stubborn however, and required I get the paint stripper out.
As you can see, the door is all shiny and fresh. To help eliminate this from happening again, it is recommended to put a coat of paint on either the backside of the hinge or the door itself. I decided to put a thin coat on the door; to protect it from possible rust happening overnight. I used a small paint brush that my daughter lent to me.
There’s some pitting and some primer that I just couldn’t get off. It’s okay. I’m no expert on this, and will never claim to be. I discovered that I’m out of spray primer; so I will be leaving first thing in the morning for some to proceed with the next step.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that anytime I wash my Jeep, there always seems to be a “backwash” of sorts that comes out from the hinge area. Hopefully I’ll resolve it with this.
The door and the back side of the hinge were covered with a hard but thin layer of a calcified like substance. I think that is the remnants of the oxidation, which created a sliver of space between the door and hinge itself allowing for the seeping I mentioned.
The day up and flew by on me, I can’t wait to complete this tomorrow. I’ll update this post with my results.
Update:
As promised, here are the results. I’m not 100% happy but I am pleased with the results. I woke up this morning to my neighbor commenting on my facebook post offering to sandblast the hinge for me. I took him up on that offer.
I think the sandblasting really helped in the areas I was unable to reach with my crude methods of wire wheel and sandpaper. I really appreciate his offer, and will be buying him more media as a thank you. He makes really awesome things out of glass, you should check out his work!
I was headed out to get primer anyway, so meeting him at his shop was no big deal.
Then I put two coats of primer on it. I wanted black but all I could find was grey. Oh well. This was fairly straightforward.
While this was drying, I decided to multitask and mow the yard; well sections of it. Now it was time for the Mopar color I have been sitting on for a while now.
I put a coat on and it reminded me of the days when I put together model cars. The paint acted very similar. I went with it the best I could, but the bottle had no instructions.
As I was mowing a section of my yard; the wind decided to blow some tree pieces onto the wet paint. I tried to remove a “helicopter” from one of my maple trees, but it removed the color AND some of the primer! Boo.
Running against a time crunch, I decided to make the best of what I had. I can always redo it later on if I’m not happy. I sprayed two coats on the hinge in it’s entirety, then added a couple of more coats on that particular area where the paint and primer had been removed. It helped even it out some.
As you can see, it’s not perfection. I didn’t expect it either. I need to do some touch ups all around the area of the hinge itself but mother nature had other plans. It began raining. Thankfully the paint had dried. Since it was raining, I decided to wait to do any touch-ups until after it quit raining.
All in all, I’m very happy with the results. It makes my Jeep look so much better.