Need help with Banks hinges

[jjbunn]

I've had a bit of a hiatus from the Europa for a while, but returned attention to it today. I have the nice Banks hinges fitted on both doors, but am having a devil of a time getting them adjusted.

The windscreen is off, so I can reach in and access the hinges with the door shut. However, I can't tighten the nuts well because I can't get the flat spanner on the outside of the hinge as access is impossible, I can only use the ring spanner.

I have both a thin flat spanner for the outside of the hinge, and a shortened 12 point ring wrench for inside.

With the door open, I can put a floor jack under the rear end of the door and raise it to horizontal. I then tighten the hinges, top and bottom. I'm not sure how to adjust the central hinge pin, so I hand tighten it, on top and bottom.

Now, if I try closing the door, the front lip of the door catches on the bodywork.

If I loosen both hinges, I can finagle the door shut, and it latches - all looks good. I then tighten the hinges as best I can by reaching in via the window and applying the ring wrench. However, when I open the door, it drops about an inch at the rear end.

I feel like I may be missing a trick to this - I've spent way too long messing with it!

Would love to get some advice from someone who's fitted these hinges before.

[BDA]

I have those hinges and they are great but I am not the expert. My driver's door latches really well but it leaks rain more than it should (it's supposed to leak a little, isn't it?  ). My passenger door latches ok but sometimes needs to be handled very gently and purposefully - and it took me hours to get it that good! But I'll tell you what I can.

First I made a wrench (spanner) from a flat piece of steel for the flats accessible from outside the door and I use a 1 1/4" deep socket with a regular ratchet (I did not try a shortened box-end (ring) wrench). I think those are analogous to what you are using so if what you're using works for you, great, but I found the deep socket very helpful.

I used a similar strategy as you with the floor jack. The interior pins are used to adjust the height of the door. Lower the top pin and lower the bottom pin to raise the door - vice versa to lower it. I'm sure you have that idea. I  think I tried to get the height pretty close first. Then, propping up the door with the jack to where it looked good, I snugged the rest of the hinge with the deep socket (usually, the outside part would stay put enough that I didn't need to use my home made wrench. Then I watched the door as I carefully closed it to test the alignment and make sure it didn't hit anything. If the far end (away from the hinges) was too low, I would open the door, support it with the jack, loosen the main part of the hinge, and jack it up a little, snug the hinge again and try again. If it was even front to back but sticking out at the top or bottom, I would support it with the jack and adjust the top in toward the outside if the top is out, the bottom toward the outside if the bottom is out. When you get one adjustment where you want it, try to keep that one from changing. When it's where you want it, tighten everything up with your spanner and ring wrench.

If that didn't help you (and it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't), it really is just trial and error - with the emphasis on error - at least it is for me. Unfortunately, I don't have any tricks. As I said, I still don't have the passenger door latching the way I want. I simulated the action by putting a phillips screwdriver in the door lock in place of the latch in the jamb to test the lock and see how it works. It works and I think I understand what's supposed to happen. I moved the latch in and out, up and down, cursed it, caressed it, sweet talked it, and tried to bribe it (basically what I did with the hinges). It's better but it's just so-so. I don't carry many passengers so for now, I just make sure I close the door and test it. One day when I am REALLY motivated, I may try to tackle it again.

Hopefully, you got some gem from reading this, but I don't hold a lot of hope for it! Maybe somebody else can give both of us that little nugget that will make it all fall into place!

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

[jjbunn]

Thanks - your talking me through your procedure is very helpful. Your method is not unlike what I have tried, but now that I know the whole adjustment is not as easy as expected, I will approach it in a better frame of mind :-)

Yes, I'll update on progress, when/if it occurs :-)

[BDA]

I might add that I think it's all about small adjustments even if you don't think you're close. Make a small change and test it. Make another small change and test it. If it is worse, try to back out the change. If you make a big change and it doesn't work, it could be hard to get back where you were.

Good luck!

[jjbunn]

I think the challenge is that with these hinges there are just too many degrees of freedom! In a stroke of genius I thought I could actually remove the threaded hinge pins on top and bottom, then run a 1/2" diameter rod up and through both hinges, adjust the door, tighten the nuts, remove the rod carefully, and carefully reinsert the pins.

However, I don't think I have enough clearance under the car to get a rod up there  I'll have another go tomorrow.

[BDA]

If I understand what you're describing, it sounds a lot like the stock hinge setup. I've never tried them, though I had bought a stainless steel set from r.d. They seemed like they would be much more difficult, but maybe they aren't. Joji wrote an article on how to do them here http://www.lotuseuropa.org/LotusForum/index.php?topic=1049.0

[EuropaTC]

However, I don't think I have enough clearance under the car to get a rod up there

If it's possible to go that way with the Banks' hinges then yep, you'll need to raise the front of the car to get enough clearance for the rod to get underneath the hole in the sill. 

If it's any consolation, the standard set-up can be equally annoying because you've still got in/out/forwards/backwards movement where the hinge clamps to the door and unless you are extremely fortunate the first time is a very, very steep learning curve. 

I had to adjust my doors earlier this year and although I expected a weekend of frustration and swearing, for some reason they just sailed back into place. That's with the OEM design with a stainless rod and ok, it's not perfect but it's not bad, and for a Lotus it's probably excellent   

I set the vertical adjustment with stainless washers underneath the lower bush and had both hinges stiff but still push-able.  I taped the edges of the doors with gaffer tape to protect the paint and then with the window down to make handling easier I just pushed to door into place on the door catch, continually checking the gap at the front of the door before pushing it onto the B post catch which held everything in place.   Into the car from the other side and then nip the hinges.

It wasn't perfect as you can imagine but only a case of minor up/down to make it smooth on the B post catch.  It probably took longer to write this post than actually do !

Brian

[Grumblebuns]

The excessive  range of movement allowed by the hinge pins setup was for me the main issue in getting the doors adjusted. To allow some sort of repeatability in the adjustment procedure you have to get the door back to the original starting position, make the small adjustment and then check the fit. To reduce the excessive slop between the door hinge and the square bobbin in the door, I used heater hose to take up the slack between the hinge and door bobbin. This pretty much got me in the ballpark immediately. You can use additional thinner PVC hose to fine tune the fit. Not being familiar with the Banks pin arrangement, I don't know for sure if my little trick will work with yours. Final adjustment was as BDA describes. 

[jjbunn]

Well, I finally managed to get the driver's door done, although I'm not very happy with it. It needs some care when shutting. I'm going to leave final adjustment until I have fitted the door opening seals that I got from Ray.

In the process I took off the door, removed the hinges, greased everything up liberally, and tightened the hinges in the position that makes the door as far back and far out as possible. Then I replaced the door in the aperture and went from there.

The other thing that I think helped a lot was lowering the catch plate: it was definitely too high up when I started.

Now for the passenger door 

[BDA]

Glad you made some progress! I would think that adjusting the doors would best come after the weather stripping but maybe it's better without it at first. As I say, I'm no expert.

One of the things I really like about Richard's hinges is that you can take the door off the car without changing the adjustment (except for the possibility of some vertical adjustment which is the easiest to correct).

[jbcollier]

Adjust the door fit without the latches in place.  Then fit and adjust the latches to suit.

[jjbunn]

Yes, I will remove the latch before doing the passenger door. Unfortunately it seems that the screws are solid, so I'm going to have to wait until PB Blaster has had time to do its magic on them before removing the latch.

Thanks for all the help and encouragement!

[kerrywittig]

I took the advice of packing around the threaded portion of the hinge. I used a section of heater hose (about 1") and then installed the assemblies in the doors.....was a very easy install. The hose just about aligns the door position perfectly.

Then using two 1 1/8"  stubby, open end wrenches that I fabricated and a 30 mm bicycle rear axle adjustment wrench (a bit large but works fine), (cost $10) that I got from a cycle shop. I used that thin wrench to hold the hinge itself from turning between the body and the door.....It took 10 minutes per door to get them as good as one can expect.....for a Europa. Very pleased with the results.

Doors R Me

[4129R]

When working on a Lotus, especially the large nut items, you end up having to cut spanners in half, or grinding them thinner, or even making very thin ones from sheet steel, as the spanners have to fit into thin spaces.

I cut a very long 1 1/8th combination ring and open spanner in half just to undo the nets on the hinges. I made a thin spanner just to hold the outer bit in place out of steel flat bar.

Treat it as a challenge, both mental and physical.

Alex in Norfolk.