I collected all the bits – just throw it together and call
it a door, no worries, yep. Yeah…
Finally satified with the paint on the doors, I bought all the channel runners, fuzzy strips, new cranks, new outside handles, weather stripping, stainless fasteners, te whole kit, good to go. Cleaned, bead blasted and painted the metal bits – cracking! I know working on doors is tedious, but nothing really to it. Test fit the parts, take your time, don’t scratch the paint, and you’ll have new doors, right? Just throw it together - hmm-hmm, sure!
Window Regulators
I’m just gonna say it, Rootes’ window regulator design blows, it’s
flimsy, ain’t up to the task. I bet many had failed by the late 60's. Any looseness
in the mechanism (and it came with plenty of factory installed looseness) misaligns the
parts and crunchy grinding follows.
Sprocket and Gear
If you have taken Alpine doors apart, you will notice that
the passenger’s side sprocket is in good nick, but the driver’s side almost
always has half-eaten teeth on the sprocket.
The sprocket flexes, the gear moves on the shaft, the shaft wiggles in
its mounts, shifting the gear teeth to the edge of the sprocket where overzealous
yanking and cranking chews metal off the sprocket teeth – see the pic. If the Rootes crew had made the gear a few
millimeters wider, creating a larger contact patch, using a heftier shaft that doesn’t
wobble in its mount, this wouldn’t be a problem. (I would think they would have noticed this
by Series IV and V.)
AND the little (meaning TINY, not up to the task) flange that holds the sprocket
in line with the gear bends easily, allowing the sprocket to flex away from the
gear. AND the TINY axle doesn’t hold the
gear solidly in place, so the gear itself moves some. The gear/sprocket meshing surface is scant at
best straight from the assembly line.
Yeah, the design abundantly sucks.
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Half-eaten teeth exacerbate the gear/sprocket alignment problem. |
Vendors once had replacement regulators but not
anymore. The interwebs have “kits” – a
new sprocket and a gear (which probably requires a lot of fiddling to fit with
the other regulator parts).
Having two sets of old regulators, I could combine the best of all the parts. First, replace the chewed-up driver’s side sprocket with the second passenger’s side one. (If you don't have a spare passsenger's side sprocket, I suppose you could flip a driver's side one - I didn't test this method however.)
The caveat is that I had to grind off the
factory pressed on doohickey pivoty thingy that holds the coil spring tension. Turns out, that caused a myriad of travails,
to wit.
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Choose the best of the bits - yeah, they tend to rust... A lot, especially in Alpine left to the elements for 30-ish years! |
Tip: Take plenty of pictures before putting the mass
of articulated appendages under the knife.
Once the arms are free to move at will, it’s confusing to get them back
in the correct orientation. I riveted
the wrong end of the sprocket to one of the arms but didn’t know it until I had
the whole thing reassembled, more on that coming up.
Gear/Sprocket Mesh Problem
Given that the margin of error for the gear and sprocket to
mesh is damnably small, any play in the sprocket/gear/shaft and its assorted bits
allows the gear and sprocket to slip alignment – hence the crunchy grinding and chewed up sprockets.
Gear Solution – Examine the regulator gear, spring,
housing and shaft. Find all the play and almost every part has some play. The
shaft can move in line with itself, allowing the gear to migrate to the sprocket’s
edge – crunch. Find some washers to take
up any slack that 60+ years of exurberant cranking has created. I used a copper washer (only one, despite the pic) at the top of the
shaft between the shaft and housing and a #10 Teflon washer between the shaft
and gear so that the gear seats solidly to the bushing at the base of the
shaft, no play.
I took some pics so hopefully, you can see it.
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I used one of the copper washer and a #10 Teflon washer to take up the slack at both ends of the gear assembly. |
Behavioral Solution – Take it bloody easy when I/you
crank the windows up and down. It ain’t
a race fer cryin’ out loud!
Coil Spring Mount Problem
The coil spring mount must orient to the mechanism
correctly, or the spring won’t have the tension it needs to ease the crankage
weight of the window. (Hence taking pics
before you start – I had the other driver’s side one for comparison, luck of
the moronic.) AND the mount must FIRMLY
connect to the rear most arm, but not to the sheet metal frame where the
regulator gear and spring must swivel.
Makes for tricky welding, which didn’t work like I had hoped, see
drawings below.
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The coil spring pivot must pivot on the regulator frame but must not turn on the regulator arm. BUT the arm and pivot don't have enough metal for a solid weld |
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I cut a slot for a key, which prevents the pivot from rotating under torque. The #10 screw prevents the pivot from backing out. |
Pivot Gizmo Problems
After I found the correct orientation for the coil spring
groove in the sprocket pivot gizmo, I happily clamped it all together and broke
out the MIG welder. BUT I could not get
a solid enough bead to keep the pivot from turning and hold it all
together. There’s substantial torquing
on the pivot with the spring especially with a mindless oaf mercilessly winding
away on the window crank.
Two issues here – 1. how to hold the pivot, sheet
metal frame, and pivot arm together so that the pivot doesn’t back out, and 2.
how to prevent the pivot from turning against the torque.
Problem 1 – I drilled and tapped threads for a #10
screw to hold everything together, simple enough once I rigged up a Rube
Goldberg jig to hold it under the drill press.
Problem 2 – I cut a groove with my angle grinder into
the arm and pivot gizmo for a key, which I wedged into the groove. I tack welded the ends of the key in place
then removed enough metal to get the #10 screw through it. Hard to explain, see the drawing.
With the key to prevent the pivot from twisting and the
screw to keep it from backing out, I assembled it, check the alignment (several
times from different angles), then welded the screw, pivot, and arm together for
good measure.
I laid it all out next the other driver’s side get-up and
noticed that it wasn’t right. After a few
minutes of panic, I discerned that I had pop riveted the wrong end of the
sprocket to one of the arms.
Fortunately, an easy fix that didn’t require grinding it all apart and
starting over, like I said, the luck of the moronic.
Hinge Bolts Seizing Problem
I wasn’t expecting this one! When I reattached the door hinge, one of the bolts seized solidly to the threaded adjuster inside the door. I mean seized big time.
Yes, I had chased the
threads with a tap before it seized, to answer the question you’re thinking.
I had to drill the bloody thing out! Now I'm on the hunt for another Series IV-V upper door hinge!
I ordered new stainless bolts and used plenty of anti-seize this time.
Nothing is as easy as you thought it would/should be, ever!