KTI Off Road

Recently on our trip to Moab I have noticed that driver’s front door in our Grand Cherokee started to sag a little bit and they no longer close properly. Knowing that it’s probably classic pin problem I ordered new pins with nice brass bushings and started to tear things apart. To my great surprise when I looked at it I saw something like this:

clearly simple pin replacement job turned into not-so-simple hinge welding one…

To begin the job I pulled back rubber hose covering electrical wires and using T25 torx bit and very small 1/4″ wrench unbolted wiring harness from the door.

Then find a help to handle the door and unbolt 4 10mm bolts fastening hinges to the body. After this carefully lay down the door on some soft surface (I used soft cardboard for the lack of any dirty blanket).

In my case I only needed to unbolt upper hinge. As you can see the lower one was already fixed by somebody who did not have idea what he was doing before and now completely separated from the door.

Repairing process was started by cleaning carefully door’s surface to get rid of any rust and remove all too thin to be reused parts of the steel.

It was quite hard to get to it from the inside but I managed somehow to get clean surface. Then I cut out plate from 3/16th steel to cover whole area and clamped it from the inside as backing plate. Then using my TIG toy carefully and slowly (to not overheat thin steel) I filled out craters ripped off by hinge to get more or less even surface. After this i filled down the surface with grinder and welded the hinge back on. Unfortunately I was so consumed by the work that I didnt take any picture of clean, nice and even surface before welding the hinge on.

Small spray of rust preventive paint and voila – hinge better than new.

Now it’s time to get to original task – replacing pins. Most of the job is non brainer one. The only big task is removing old pin. On many tutorials over the net you can see the pin cut in half. Somehow I was unable to fit even the smallest cut off wheel I had there. Instead I used cut off wheel to file one of pin’s head (the shop one)

and then was able to hammer the pin out.

Now it’s time to replace bushings. As you can see factory ones doesn’t show very good quality – it’s just cheap metal collar with some graphite liner inside.

You can get them out by nicely bending old collar so you can pry it off.

Now new bearings. I used my vise to slowly and nicely press them in

but you can also tap them with hammer. Then insert hinge back in (correct side up) and tap new pin in. Remember that top pin goes in from the bottom side and bottom pin goes in from top.

Remember to clean and oil small wheels responsible for blocking door in open position – they get seized by dust and they greatly contribute to bent and broken hinges creating additional force on the pin. It took almost half of an hour to clean and lube mine. they looked awful and didn’t turn at all.

Now get your helper to keep the door while you put four bolts back in, connect wiring harness and enjoy nicely working door!

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