Well that didn’t work. Tried to get the door off. Started with this:
Drilled a bunch o holes for the slide hammer dent puller. Have I mentioned for some odd reason I get a sense of satisfaction from this tool. I like using it.
Silly me didn’t take a pic of the actual hammer. Anyway, results were marginal and slow.
Not being very concerned with preserving the door, at least not the top part, things got down to yanking on it like a crazed monkey.
Which actually was fairly effective. Maybe body shops should keep a crew of chimps on hand. But if you didn’t give them all cake they’d go ape sh*t and gnaw on your genitals. That tends to make for bad crew morale, although if you watch any of those kustom car building shows, you gotta wonder. Anyway, this is how the door stands now.
In case you’re wondering, my objective here was to remove the door so I could install my old rusty crusty door. So what I was hoping was that by somewhat straightening the door & accessing the linkages, I could unlock & unlatch the door. No such luck. Although I was able to get things straight enough that the linkages moved, the latch itself is too messed up & out of alignment to open. I even resorted to climbing inside & kicking at the door from inside. Kind of eye opening that with damage of only this extent you can’t easily force a car door open. So it looks like it’s time to call in the big guns and bring in the boys with the demolition saws. I think we’re going to have to cut the door apart. I thought of attempting to unbolt the door hinges, but you need to remove the fender to access the bolts. And in order to remove the fender, you need to open the door to access one of those bolts. Besides, chopping the door up should be good for some entertainment value, and I think Dr. D hasn’t busted out the demo saw in a while.
You got a 8-foot length of 4×4 lumber we can put against the inside of the door through the open driver’s door and ram/push with a Land Cruiser? Maybe yank on door with an extraction strap?
I have a 8lb sledgehammer. And Various other tools of Destruction
I was thinking something a little more “surgical” with the demo saw rather than massive brute forcing. Granted monster trucking cars is fun. I do want to preserve the frame and rest of the car and possibly the bottom of the door so can attempt some practice body work by attempting to graft it onto the crusty door.