So I live in chicago where it gets cold and salty and snowy and icy in the winter, and I have to park my car on the side of the street. long story short, I go dig my car out and my friend tries to open the passenger door and it will only open a few degrees before hitting the front quarter panel with an angry metal scraping sound.

Basically I'm 99% sure that the hinge is bent from being frozen or something, Does anybody on here know how I could begin to fix it?

The door can only open about 10 degrees so getting at it from the inside might be impossible unless I can just bend it back somehow. anybody else ever have this happen to them?

 

this is usually from the little plastic bushings that go between the actual pin and it's holes in the hinge breaking; basically they freeze, crack, and then fall out, allowing some play and sag in the door. Either make new ones or find something that will work, or bend out the trailing edge of the front fender slightly to allow the door to slide behind it.

 

I'm not entirely sure thats the problem since when I tried to pull up, or out on the door to get it back into its normal position it would not move move around, as in there was no play in the hinge. maybe the plastic thing is still caught in there causing this to happen?

And no, I'm not going to bend my quarter panel out to allow this door to fit, that looks awful

 

take off front fender open door see what problem is... the universal bushing packs work any auto parts store. fixed

 

do you have snowplows that plow next to your car? that snow is really heavy and it can push the fender in just a little bit for it to scrape..snowplows kill my mailbox every year

 

turboIIrotary, you are probably exactly right. It turns out that there are no plastic bushings in the door hinges, and no such thing as universal plastic bushings for doors, at least according to napa.

All I had to do was un-bolt the fender around the door so it could flex,
then open the door,
re-bolt the fender in place,
and then pull on the fender where there is a stand-off next to the door hinge.

I just pulled until it looked right, then tried to close the door and bam, it didnt scrape. I went and adjusted it a little more by pulling on it to get it pretty damn close to perfect. hopefully if anybody else has this problem they will see this thread.