Door Hell! Either not closing or refusing to open!

[flux3d]

Hi all. The long refurbish of 10719's interior is finally drawing to a close, but just as I'm about to get the car back onto the road after many hours of work two problems have reared their ugly heads.

The first is a problem with the inner seals. To re dye the interior trim and fit new carpets I removed both inner door seals. The passenger side was made up of three individual peices, so I decided to replace that one with a new one from Dave H. After putting them both on the passenger side door refused to close and catches on the top edge, near where the rear quarter interior trim meets the headliners. The drivers door is also very tight, even thoughts she same seal as was originally on the door. Both doors closed well before, especially the passenger side, which now is the worst!

Is there a direction the seals should go on, and would this make a difference? Is there a way I can sort where the seal pinches the frame? There was damage to the trim at this point, so it's not a new problem. Of course I've now repaired that same damage so I'd rather not have to do it again.

The other real nightmare problem is to do with the drivers side locking mechanism. All as fine, but suddenly yesterday while trying to fix the seal problem the door shut, but then refused to open again from the outside, as if it was locked. I had to get in through the passenger side and pull the release to get it to open again. Looking at the lock the "U" shaped latch that swings done seems to be very loose and getting in the way, locking the door.

Any ideas? I just want to get the doors working again and actually drive the car for once!

[Rissy]

Ah. The inexplicably locked door syndrome. :twisted:
I've had this a few times, on both doors.
I'd say it's a symptom of your seals getting in the way of the doors closing properly.
The times it's happened with me, I'm pretty certain it's when the door in question doesn't get closed properly, only catching on one latch, not both.
In this state, the mechanism is both closed and opened at the same time, and causes the issue of not being able to get it opened again.
Bumping the door from the outside on both latch areas to get the unlatched one, latched, and playing with the door handle from the outside sometimes works, and other times you have to play with the handle on the inside, as you've said.
The door will normally give up, and open again, to much relief to the owner, but it is embarrassing when it happens in public since you have to turn into a contortionist to reach the problem door from the inside etc. I normally end up unwinding the window, and reaching in to play with the handle, but of course sometimes you need to give the door a tug or a push etc to get the door freed, which isn't easy from the outside.

If you've got all new seals which are the same design as the original type, then yes it matters which direction they are installed. The little lip spoiler part should be pointing inwards towards the cabin, not outwards towards the bodywork. BUT, it seems that many owners are having issues with newly manufactured seals. They're not quite right, and some people find they need smaller seals, and other people find they need larger seals. It seems almost every car is different!? This is why you can but the two sizes etc. Rich H to my experience can talk about inner door seals and the issues etc since he has had all sorts of issues with this area, and every time I'm with him, we ALWAYS end up talking about inner door seals since I still need to commit to buying new ones too, but don't want the issues you are describing.

All I can add to this now for you, is good luck. :roll:

[Chris P]

I was told to give new door seals a good spray of silicone before you shut the door for the first time.. Ive found it helps.

But on most of the cars I have had, The door pinches somewhere are starts "eating them". quite soon.

As far as door alignment and catch adjustments are concerned, I'm hopeless at it and leave it to others better qualified.

[flux3d]

Cheers al, sounds like the silicone spray idea should help. On the DMCTalk pages they recommend grinding back the lip where it catches, so I might try this. It was obviously a problem with the PO as the trim seems to have been damaged by the closing of the door, so maybe this is an area to start with.

Cheers for the info on the door closing issue Martin. I had been worried that the lock was damaged somehow. It certainly never did this before I messed with the seals. Of course it picked its moment to get stuck. I'd just put it back in the garage, which meant I could open the drivers door ok, but there was only a few inches of room on the passengers side. My other car keys, garage keys and house keys were all inside the car, so with the passengers door only open a crack I had to squirm my way inside to get it open again. Thankfully I've not put too much weight on or I'd be smashing a window!

[MikeWard]

Mark, for what it's worth, the inner seals that Dave H supplies are very slightly larger than OEM (or at least the set I got off him a year or two back were), that maybe why you now have issues with the doors pinching when opening/closing.

Silicone spray only solves it until the door is used a few times, and then it returns. Best bet is to grind down the offending area as you have found on dmc talk - Or bite the bullet and get a set of inner seals from Ed.

[flux3d]

Cheers Mike. Wish I'd known that before I got one. I might give him a call and see what he says. Are the DMC Europe ones that much different or more expensive? Maybe I'll just have to try and get them to fit and then if all else fails get them from Europe instead.

[MikeWard]

The cost is roughly the same - http://www.delorean.eu/catalog/product_ ... _id=121030

[Thrust Washer]

Mark ....

E class Merc engine bay seals from the scrap yard are the same. you will have two joiners though.a good clean and a bit of glue no one will know the difference.

cheap simple fitment for the sake of a tener from the scrap yard :wink:

[flux3d]

well, sorted out the door lock problem. The outer handle wasn't moving the latch on the lock far enough, whereas the inner handle seems to have more range of movement, thus allowing it to disengage the latch when the door was closed. God knows why it has decided to lay up, but a quick look inside the door revealed the threaded adjustment on the pull rod for the release mechanism. It was a simple process of some release fluid and adjustment and the door opens and closes even better than before! The striker pins still need work, but all seems fairly good on the alignment. Maybe need a little bit of re alignment here and there. I think the PO has messed about with this door.

Another day, another new thing learnt about the DeLorean. I'm sure it has a mind of its own and just feels like testing me sometimes. The adjustment screw looked like it had never been moved, so who knows how it managed to go out of wack!

[Rissy]

Sometimes the performance of my door unlocking mechanism, including the central locking, changes according to the ambient temperature. Expansion and contraction. So you may find it works differently between summer and winter. Glad you got there in the end.

[Rich Hanlon]

It even makes a difference how you're parked as well. I've adjusted mine to be perfect on my drive - quite a steep slope - then couldn't get them to shut properly once I got to work (nice flat car park) !

[Chris P]

After Talking to Dave Howarth this morning, it would seem there are at least 3 different sizes of inner door seals. His are the larger size .....Chris N buys them for doors with bigger gaps. Dave also says that there are some currently available, from other vendors that have the narrower fitting....that is they were designed to clip over thin steel, rather than the thicker fibreglass of a Delorean.

Dave would be happy to discuss the issue by phone, most evenings.

He also advocates the silicone spray lubricant treatment and in some cases trimming of the fibre glass up stand. But I personally would be reluctant to do that until I had tried other alternatives.

[flux3d]

Had a good chat to Dave yesterday. Seems like the whole door seal thing can be a real nightmare. They could have had up to three different sizes coming out of the factory, owing to shrinkage of the underbody in the ovens used to cure them. Seems during production they turned up the heat for the curing process, resulting in some under body's shrinking by as much as 60mm! 20mm is quite common. Dave has been trying to find the perfect match for twelve years, but what's good for one car might not work with another. Mine might need to smaller see, we will see.

After getting the door mechanism to work last night I went back to the drivers door and managed to get the original seal back on and the door closing pretty good. I found that it worked best having he "lip" of the sal facing towards the bodywork Chanel, away from the open door. I then went around the whole lip pushing the seal over as in that direction as much as possble, so the lip ended up sitting as flat as it could. Seems to work a treat. I'm going to try this with the new seal over the weekend, and fingers crossed it'll work.