Door Replacement

[Jim]

Hey! Looking for some advice from some auto body techs…I have an ’00 Dodge Neon which is in excellent mechanical condition but the Driver’s front door has a significant amount of rust on the lower section of it. In the rust area there’s a small hole but when you feel around the area, there’s not much left to the metal there.

I’d like to take care of this and because of the large area of rust, I was thinking about just replacing the door. The local salvage company has an inventory search on their website and list the door of an ’01 Neon that they say is “excellent condition, rust free”, same color for $150.

What I’m looking for is if I were to unbolt the current, rusted door, would I be able to just bolt on the new door or would I face some difficulty getting everything aligned properly?

It’s all manual so I only would have 2 wires going to the speaker. I’d probably change the lock cylinder out so the key would work also. My plan was to leave the hinges bolted to the body and only mess with the bolts that attach to the door.

What are your guys thoughts?

Topic

[Bret]

even if you only remove the door, and not the hinges, you’ll still need to align the door to the jam.
last time i did this, i used Popsicle sticks after tightening the bolts snug, then made fine adjustments from there.

but to simply answer your question, yes, it should be a bolt on, no major issues.

[Jim]

thanks for the reply joezmam! I figured I’d have to do some adjustments but my thought was that by removing the old door from the hinges and then bolting the new door to the original hinges, I’d have a good starting point.

Do you have any tips for making the adjustment process easy? What’s the trick with the Popsicle sticks?

Thanks,

-Jim

[Bret]

please keep in mind, I’m no body tech lol.
but i have had to do this a few times for myself and my friends, we lived up north, and roads get slick there.

before i removed OG door, you can check your clearance around it, I like using the bottom sill, as that’s where gravity will pull it to.
you can also mark the hinge with marker to get close if your hinges are slotted like some of mine were (although i think that was done by a previous owner honestly)

the way i did it, i would leave the hinge like your planning to do, remove the old door, and bolt the new one on.
snug the bolts enough to hold the door in place so you can GENTLY open/close it without it moving(try not to let the door latch shut until you think you have everything good and tight, pulling up on the handle to open the latch has moved mine before) but keep in mind it will need to be adjusted.

the Popsicle sticks just seemed to work for my doors in the past, as the gap is close enough to original that closed, you never knew it was a different door. I would put them in the bottom sill for the first test close, when bolts are just snugged, and use a flat screwdriver with a pad on it to allow the Popsicle sticks to fit under the door. then adjust from there. this was my starting point

as for making adjusting easier…. somebody might have a good answer for that, but i really don’t. generally it would take me about an hour to get the door completely done and lined up properly. i would open and close that door like 50 times making minor pulls up and down to get it as close as i could, and left it at that.

hope this helps

[Jim]

Thanks for the advice joezmam! I’m glad I was planning on going about it the same way with which bolts to leave alone. Holding the handle open makes sense also, so you can try to dial in the adjustments. It seems like it’ll just be a few trial and errors till I get something that works out!

I’m planning on giving this a go sometime around Christmas when I’ll have some more time off work, and I can recruit someone to help out holding the door!!

I’ll try to watch a couple of videos in the mean time to see if someone else can offer any additional tricks to make the process go easier as well. Plus it always helps to have a visual as well!

[Author]

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