Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2021 00:36:10 -0700
Reply-To: Gene P <olgreywoof@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Gene P <olgreywoof@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Slider Hinge -- LONG, REALLY WAY LONG
In-Reply-To: <60BA67F0-A972-4713-AB82-A731B41195F8@comcast.net>
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Well, I'm through writing and now inserting this at the front. After doing it for Eric, now I'm putting it on list. If people are asking him to forward stuff, that's not fair to him or them either, so maybe as a one-off, it's okay. I work best visually, a breakthrough for me in getting this one done was when a kind soul sent me some pics of a new hinge disassembled so I could see what I was trying to build. I just found trying to use words to create pictures takes a LOT of words. So ...
Eric, you could be right about the spring just being out of position. One of that plastic sleeve's functions is to keep the spring aligned with the hinge post. Check out that side of the assembly. Where the post emerges from the top of the spring, if it were all there, you would feel a slightly rounded plastic cap. If not, you should feel the squared off end of the metal post. If most of the plastic is missing, the spring would be very loose on the post - the inner diameter of the spring is much larger than the diameter of the post.
Just below the top of the post, there is a pin passing horizontally through the post. Notice at the top of the spring, the wire bends up to vertical. The end of that pin should be at or near that vertical wire so that when you swing the hinge as it would move when the door was closing, the pin would contact the vertical wire and load the spring. I have not seen this, but it seems like if that spring was sitting at enough of an angle because of the missing sleeve, the pin could miss the upright end of the spring and fail to wind it. In that case, you could have a perfectly good spring that wasn't doing anything.
Disassembly involves just removing that pin from the post, there is nothing else holding that side of the assembly together. I knocked it mostly out with a hammer and punch, then pulled it out the last bit with pliers. You'll want to do something similar so it doesn't fall all apart when the pin comes out. Have the assembly upright, post up, spring at the top when you remove the pin. Then you can remove things one at a time to inventory what's there.
Before removing the spring, note at the base of it, unlike at the top where it bends vertical, the wire at the bottom extends out horizontally. Make note of which side of the hinge that extended spring wire sits against. If you reassemble it with that wire on the wrong side, the spring will not be loaded when the door is closed.
Spring comes off first, then you can determine what else is there. I had a remnant of the plastic sleeve, maybe half inch, square at the base and jagged at the top where it had broken. That piece is your size reference for what you need to buy to make a sleeve/cap. Notice its fit on the post, a little loose. Slide the spring over it and notice how that fits, a little loose.
Back to the post, with whatever plastic sleeve is there removed. There should be some kind of rubber seal at the base of the plastic sleeve. What I had was crumbling, too deteriorated to see what shape it should have been. The plastic sleeve sits down on the seal, the spring goes around it and sits down on the metal of the hinge, metal to metal at the base of the spring.
The hinge has a small dogleg in the flat part. Make note of its orientation, or somehow mark 'UP' on the hinge so it doesn't get replaced upside down. You need to get the hinge replaced in the same orientation, with the spring leg on the correct side of the hinge.
The bottom of the hinge rides against another rubber seal. Mine was intact but cracked, very little life left. It is like a fat o-ring with a groove in the inner diameter so it fits over a ridge in the bow, the round u-shaped frame of the assembly. Good luck finding an 0-ring with a groove on the inner diameter.
OK, that's as far as I went. The seals on the other side of the bow, where the guide bearings and roller are, seemed intact, so I just sprayed lots of penetrating lubricant into those cracks, swung the roller carrier back and forth about 50 times and sprayed some more.
Pretend Parts -
For that O-ring with a groove, I used a fat o-ring that fit snugly in an indent just below the ridge the groovy o-ring is supposed to ride on. So it's too low. Then I added another fat o-ring, about the diameter of the round part of the hinge that fits over the post (o-ring same diameter as the part of the hinge it rests against), so that the hinge rides at about the height it would with the correct part. This is not a precision mechanism, I hope that works.
The sleeve/cap - You want to find something that has the same inner and outer diameter as the original plastic broken thing. It doesn't exist. At least in my town. I found some nylon sleeve material that was near perfect outside diameter and just a bit small inside diameter, so I had to drill it out. Easy enough job with a drill press. I don't have a drill press, so I winged it with a 3/8 drill, got one piece more off-plumb than I wanted, then got two 'good enough'. These were 59 cent pieces, throwaways allowed. They were not long enough so I had to glue two together. I intended to reinforce that seam with a piece of heat-shrink, but that added too much to the diameter and made the spring too snug. The sleeve should extend just a little above the top of the metal post. I cut mine down after assembly to be SURE I would not end up with it too short.
Sleeve alternative - I found 1/2 inch Pex pipe had perfect inside diameter (just a little loose on the post) but the spring fit snugly over it, so it would be impeding the winding/loading of the spring as the door closed. No go. If I were doing this again, I'd get a piece of that Pex and take some emery cloth or whatever to it to see if I could reduce the outside diameter enough to make the spring fit on loose enough. Then cut to length, no inside diameter drilling, no gluing pieces together. If that worked, it would be cleaner than what I did.
The seal at the base of the sleeve, on top of the hinge - the real part is a contoured/beveled VW thing that probably exists nowhere else on this planet. Again, it seems to form a seal only with the plastic sleeve, so it's keeping the weather off the metal post that the spring rides on. I used a small o-ring against the top of the hinge, then a couple neoprene washers to provide a flat surface for the sleeve to sit down on. Again, the spring slides over/around that seal, so I had to trim down the outside diameter of those washers.
Assembly
Hinge on correct side up, sleeve seal on top of hinge. Figure out where on the length of the plastic sleeve the hole for the pin needs to be to hold the sleeve down correctly on the seal. Too high and the sleeve won’t slide on far enough to get the pin through, too low and it won’t reach the seal so it won’t seal anything. Drill a hole in one side of the sleeve 'just' big enough the pin will slide through without enough pressure to crack the plastic, causing an unwanted start-over situation. Pick a drill bit that 'just' slides through the hole in the metal post. Slide sleeve on post, slip bit through hole in plastic and post and drill the hole out the other side of sleeve.
Now, ready to be done. Check that hinge is oriented correctly. Put some grease on the post. Slip sleeve onto post. Slip spring on, being sure to get that bottom wire extension on the correct side of the hinge flat. I had been apprehensive about how I was going to pound that pin through the post without cracking the plastic sleeve. No problem at all, no pounding. I held the assembly up to a bench vise and gently pressed it through, not difficult at all. The pin slides through far enough to hold the spring on both sides, sticking out farther on the side that pushes the upright of the spring. Possibly being compulsive, I put a dab of silicone around the pin where it passes in and out of the sleeve. Seal means seal.
Capper. If that sleeve and seal under it are going to seal anything, the top has to be closed. It looks to me like the aftermarket hinges are not closed at the top, which I don't understand. Mine got capped. If I had found a decent pipe cap that extended into the pipe a bit, I would have stuck it in with some RTV and been done with it. All I could find was a cabinetry screw-head cover, so I shoved a little rubber plug in the end (hardware store) and then glued on the screw-head cover. Done. If you don't look too closely, it really looks much like the original. Will it hold up? Ask me next year.
From: Eric Caron
Sent: Wednesday, March 3, 2021 1:36 PM
To: Gene P
Cc: Vanagon List
Subject: Re: Slider Hinge
Hi Gene,
I’d love the information about how to get it apart and rebuild.. In my case the spring might even be good just no longer in the correct position and affected by the broken sleeve and other parts.
I know others on the list are interested in what you accomplished as I’ve received a few emails asking if you had sent more info on the rehab process.
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