Hey Guys,

The rebuild project on my FB is progressing, and the doors will be going back on in the near future. Joe noticed that the hinges on the driver's door are worn down quite a bit and "the arm that rides on the wheel to stop the door at different opening lengths has ridden off the wheel/gotten mashed". The parts cars we have available have similar wear so we're trying to find a source for newer/better condition hinges.

Found nothing at Black Dragon, Mazdatrix, Mazda itself, Rock Auto, or pretty much any other place I've looked.

Anyone know where to get new/rebuilt/decent condition hinges?

Jon

 

Cross reference? I bet MAZDA used the same hinge on many cars over the years.

 

Any idea how I go about cross-referencing? I can pull the original part number from the parts fiche, but at that point how to I link it to "newer" part numbers used in other cars?

 

hinges are NLA, and have been for a while. this is why the resellers don't have them

hinges weren't used on any other Mazda either, and even if they were they would be dead way longer than the Rx7...

 

I wonder if you can take a generic reconditioning kit for hinges and make it work with ours?

I assume the big issue is the main pin warps/wears so things aren't square anymore.

 

there are two sizes of GM hinge kits, and both are way different than the Mazda stuff.

the hinges ARE rebuildable, but you'd need to make your own hinge pins and bushings

 

Too bad there isn't a good fab shop out there run by a rotorhead that could design and build these kinds of things the way Billy did with all the ReSpeed stuff.

I'm hoping that one of these years 3D Printing tech will become cheap enough (and use material strong enough) that we can print these parts out ourselves. If 3D scanning tech catches up to it, there are so many NLA parts that we'd be able to make for ourselves to keep these cars running for years. A few people investing the time to scan, model, tweak and test these parts for their own use would result in blueprints that the whole community could use.

Honestly, the tech can't get here fast enough.

 

I Hear there is a Nissan hinge pin kit that works...

 

I took a chance and ordered a pin and bush set off ebay that was for Toyota corolla ke20 / ke25 / ke30. worked out well, just had to shorten 2 of the 4 pins.
Ash

 

Time to by a Lambo door kit.

 

I ended up finding a set here on the forum (thanks goes out to Ray Green there!) that were in decent shape.

The pins and bushings aren't the main issues with the ones we have on the parts cars. The issue is that little stopper piece that holds the door halfway out, then fully out. The hinges work fine as hinges, but with that little stopper piece all messed up the door doesn't keep itself open.

The ones Ray got me are in great shape, but it'd be nice to know if there's an available replacement for that stopper piece, for anyone who isn't so lucky as to find a good condition used set.

 

haha.... no