SNAP! Went the hinge to my drivers door one summer morning, it had obviously had enough of my constant need to open and close it, broke down and dropped an inch on one side...
I was told this couldn't be welded properly, so a replacement door was needed.
Being an old and plentiful car, a door was easy enough to obtain for a cheap price. However, at that specific time there weren't that many choices of colour available at the local breakers
Unfortunately for me it was only available in white.
White of course being the polar opposite of black!
Removing Fiesta doors is a complete pain of a job as the pins that hold the door onto the car seize in the hinges and will not come out no matter how much and how hard you hit them, or how loud you shout and swear at them.
Fortunately the nice man at the breakers yard knew this would be a challenge for me, and offered to remove the pins for me using a blow torch and the ford service tool.
So all I had to do was pop out a nut and bolt he put in their place so I could drive home without holding on to the door.
I foolishly attempted to swap over the doors later that evening thinking it would be an quick and easy job to swap over the internals and hang the new door.
It wasn't!
I had to remove the door panel, mirror, drill out the rivets holding the armrest support and electric window motor, remove the sound proof lining, all the door handle and lock mechanism, and the wiring loom.
Fitting it all back should have been a reversal of the removal, but the strange twin plate thing to hold the door lock in place refused to go back together and in to location, i dropped one of the tiny screws that holds the door handle on and couldn't find it anywhere and couldn't remember how the loom was positioned around the door (I swear i took a photo for reference, but I didn't)
By now it was starting to get dark and I was starting to get irritated with myself. But the biggest problem was the two hinges on the new door were slightly closer together than the old door by about 2mm, meaning the door wouldn't actually fit! Even though my car and the donor car were both from 1998!
This meant filing at the hinges in the dark with a file I (luckily) bought recently for another project until it fitted into place, tapped the pins back in and secured with the clips, reconnected the electrical connection and bolted the tie-strap back into place.
You've no idea how much looking at this will annoy me...
There has been some suggestion on the internet that I should paint the rest of the doors white so it looks more like this...
Anyway, the next day while I could actually see what I was doing, I refitted the door panel with new panel clips, found the screw for the door handle and cleaned all my grubby handprints off...Finally, anyone want an old broken Fiesta door?
UPDATE:
Somebody has stolen the broken door from the garden!
Actually it saves me the hassle of taking it to the dump.
Thanks random metal thief, whoever you are...
?ILLEGAL DIRECT ERROR