Page Sixty-Four - SITREP Alphie 2025

 

Alphie is looking younger (almost) everyday!  (I’m not, however.)

During the “Assembly Phase,” which was five years in the making, everything I do takes years off Alphie.  No particular schedule to it, just as I buff out a section, I install more stuff.

Check out Alphie's new shoes!

Installing the doors was a fairly big swing (sorry, can’t help myself) because I could then adjust the windshield to the quarter lights and install the weather stripping.  I screwed up some paint, but I knew assembly would create touch-up opportunities.

Oh, and NEW SHOES! 

Huge shout out to Classic Car Performance from whom I bought Alphie’s Motor Wheel Service (MWS) Dunlop wire wheels.  Alphie’s new shoes are 13”X4.5”, a half inch wider than his originals, but the 4.5’s were a tad cheaper, and I figured he could use a bit larger contact patch.  Other than the extra half inch, all the other specs are spot on.  Found out that the 4.5 inchers require inner tubes where the 4 inchers don’t.  No biggie, but I didn’t notice that until I saw the sticker on the wheels.

They’re chrome.  You could get chrome wire wheels back in the day, but only from the dealership.  The factory only fitted painted wire wheels.  But damn do they look fantastic – remember, I ‘m going for “reasonably” original.

Thirteen-inch tires are becoming Dodos.  I found a few, but I bought some from Coker Tires.  They’re not performance tires by any stretch, but neither is Alphie.  Coker Tires also had the inner tubes I needed.

PICTURES!

Dash, glove box, steering wheel, wind screen (shield) and doors installed

Door and quarter light weather stripping installed

Boot and boot bits installed
(I wanted to see what all the boot tools looked like in place.)

Boot lid with springs installed!

Bonnet latch installed
(I have some clean-up work to do in the engine bay.)

The bonnet is buffed and ready to go but not on the hinges yet

Paint Boo-Boos

I’m still plagued with paint clangers (a Brit bit for ya), some self-inflicted, some not. If you look closely at these pics, you'll see a few of them.

I will say, partly because you can't prove me wrong, that the paint looks better in the wild than in my pics.

Refitting the doors, the bonnet, boot lid and such will almost always leave some scrapes and chips.  So far, I haven’t just dropped something or bumped into it.  I realize just saying that puts Alphie's paint in significant danger.

I expect a bit of Sod’s Law, especially during assembly.  I’ll tackle the paint cock-ups when I finish screwing up stuff.

But I have some curious ghosty blemishes that appeared after I polished out the clear coat.  Still scratching my head over it, but my theory is that the ghosts are bits of color coat exposed during wet sanding, like layers on a cake you can see after it’s been cut.

I hope that spraying another layer of clear over it will scare off the ghosts – more on that later.

A couple of update pics!

Tail lights, bumperettes (bumper guards? buffers? Doohickies?
whatever the Brits call 'em) and rear bumper installed!

License (number) plate lights and bracket installed!

Page Sixty-Three - Doorhenge

 

You never wanted to know this much about door hinges, and I’m so sorry for wasting your brain space.  I hope it doesn't push out your granma's phone number or some other important bit of info.

Alpiners tell me that door hinges are side specific; okay, but I can only find the smallest difference between them, and if it is the defining difference, I can’t see how it would make even the slightest functional difference.

And the part numbers!

We’re only talking Series IV & V upper door hinges - the lower hinges are asymmetrical and only fit one way, and I don’t know anything about the early models.

So, what’s NOT the difference?

Hole placement: The upper hinge hole pattern is symmetrical on both plates.

The holes are equidistant and symmetrical

Distance from hinge pivot pin to holes: The holes are all equidistant from the pivot on each plate.

Angle from hinge plate to pivot pin: I checked, the angles of the door side plate are the same as the pin side plate and are the same on the driver’s side and passenger’s side hinges.  It’s possible that someone bent a hinge to massage the gaps and door fit, but that seems unlikely as bending the hinges would require either a hell of a lot of force or a torch.

Each bend-angle on each plate is the same

My Search for something that shows which hinges goes on which side

Forum Posts: I can’t find a forum post that discusses which hinge goes where – a couple of posts mention that the hinges are side specific, but they're mute on which side mounts where. 

Online Pics: I have looked for pictures online (and there are bloody few of them) that show the orientation of the hinges, and even when I found one, I can’t be sure that someone hasn’t swapped the hinges at some point.

Part Numbers: Talk about a dry hole!  What are the damn part numbers for that matter? 

Each hinge has two sets of “part” numbers, which I’m beginning to think are more likely casting numbers.

Driver’s Side Hinge Part Numbers:

Front Facing Numbers (door mount side or double pivot point plate)	Rear Facing Numbers (A pillar mount side or single pivot point plate)
IH	IH
2201312	2201314
220313	2201315
(W)	(W)

Passenger’s side Hinge Part Numbers:

Front Facing Numbers (door mount side or single pivot point plate)	Rear Facing Numbers (A pillar mount side or double pivot point plate)
IH	IH
2201314	2201312
2201315	220313
(W)	(W)

If you’re looking closely – and you must – one set of numbers designates the single pivot point plate, no matter whether it mounts to the door or A pillar.  And the other set of numbers designates the double pivot point plate.  (Absolutely no idea why one string of numbers has six digits while the rest have seven.)

"Part" numbers, which seem more likle cast numbers

Same for the back of the hinges
NOTE the numbers switch!

SO, the numbers stamped on the hinge CANNOT be part numbers since each hinge has both sets of numbers stamped either on the front or the back.

The Parts Manual: The parts manual lists part numbers, but not the ones above.  I even looked for the numbers in the “Numerical Index” (section ZZ of the parts manual), zed, nowt (look it up), bugger all.  I can find the part number before and after the ones I’m looking for, but there’s a gap where they should be.

AND the part numbers listed in the Parts Manual are not the ones stamped on the hinges.  No help there, at all!

So, what is the difference?

Where the single pivot point plate mounts: The difference is that the single pivot point plate mounts to the door and the double pivot point plate mounts to the A pillar. 

That’s it, it’s all I can find, and I have no idea why it matters!

My unanswered questions: 

1.   1.  What functional difference (given the symmetry of the upper hinges) could mounting the single pivot point to the door or the A pillar make?

Why the difference?  You could argue that the weight of the door is better suited to swing on the single or double pivot point, maybe.  Either way, the hinges’ pivot points are holding the weight of the swinging door; I can’t see how which side has the single point or the double makes much, if any difference.

2.    2. How do we know that the single pivot point side mounts to the door anyway?

Crowd Sourcing:  Eric tells me that on each of his Alpines, the hinges are mounted with the single pivot point on the door.  I posted the question on the Sunbeam Alpine Owners Club of America (SAOCA) forum, and other Alpiners back Eric’s conclusion. 

Lower Hinges: The lower hinges bolster the “single-pivot-point-to-the-door” theory.  Since they are asymmetrical, we know exactly how the lower hinges mount, and the plate that mounts to the door has one less pivot point (2 points) than the plate that mounts to the A pillar (3 points).

Still, there isn’t any documentation to confirm any of this.

But, one more thing…

Another Data Point: And it’s circumstantial, one set of Alphie’s hinges are noticeably looser than the other set.  Since the driver’s side door is opened and closed significantly more often than the passenger side, it would stand to reason that the driver’s side hinges would be looser.

As it turns out, with all my putzing around online, fiddling with part numbers, and with Eric’s pic and forum posts, the set we collectivly identified as the driver’s side hinges are indeed the loose ones.  

There you have it, case closed, solid, definitive research, innit? 

Everything ready to go  - FINALLY!

Although I can’t see that it matters, I’m going with it.

If you happen to know that everything above is bollocks, please post a comment. 

I really would like to know why Rootes made them side specific.