Door problem with 92 Daytona!

[kcar]

I have a 92 Daytona and have a problem opening the doors from the outside. I have to lift and pull the door really hard to get it to open. The doors open great from the inside. The hinges do not seem to be very sloppy. Anyone else have this problem? Any ideas would be great. Thanks

[leveliv]

Door Pins....replace em...I have that same problem.

[turbopac]

I had the same problem a while back on my 87 if the hinges are good open the door and look where the hasp is there is a small oval hole above it you can put a allen wrench in there ,there is a small allen bolt in it you can loosen it and play with the adjstment it may take a coup[le of times of loosing and tighting to get it but it should be there thats you problem I replaced my hinges and still had to do this If this is unclear ill go out later and look at mine for a better discription let me know!!!

[reliantwagon]

when its open try picking up on the door if it picks up you need a hinge rebuild kit... has new bushing and stuff..

[chilort]

I agree, it is one of the two possible problems listed here. It is either the hinges or the handle. I had an '88 and my problem was the handle. I replaced the whole thing from a JY car and it was much better.

[Goose]

The rod from the outside handle to the latch has a normal bend in it. After many uses, it bends more than normal. All you have to do is straighten it back and the problem is fixed. I've done it on many vehicles.

[03GLHWRX]

I am a door hardware engineer for one of the Detroit 3. I don't know whether Daytona latches are the same as Omni latches or not, but it sounds so. Every Omni I've seen with more than a few miles has the same problem and the fix always has to do with the compensating linkage on the latch (as referred to above - the allen wrench adjustment). Given more time and gumption I've been meaning to write a complete fix for this with pix etc., but here's the short version. (edit - OK, so it didn't turn out so short)

Why do they do this? A given design of door handle only has so much stroke available to move the rod. This is usually dictated by the angular travel of the handle, acceptable efforts, and distance to glass. Likewise, the latch input lever has a certain amount of travel by its design to get to the key points - the release point being the one we care about. For an example lets say tat the design of the handle guarantees that the handle will always supply 15mm of stroke and the latch will always reach its release point at 13 mm of stroke. Things should always work out, right? Not so. There is another variable (besides rod length tolerance, slop at the joints, angular alignment, and other minor factors). You see, the door has an inner panel and an outer panel and within each panel are the punched hole patterns for the handle and latch. The locations of these holes within the panels and the alignment of the two panels to each other vary from car to car. A lot. In the stuff I'm working with this can account for +/-4mm from the nominal design. So if you had a handle that was at design minimum (15mm stroke in this example) and a latch that was at design maximum 13mm and then assembled them onto a door that just happened to have the maximum distance from the handle to the latch then you'd find that you couldn't open the latch. Likewise, if you had a door that happened to have the minimum distance from the handle to the latch then you'd find that the door would probably open too early and be a safety problem, something that we try very hard to be sure we never have. So to avoid the tolerance stackup problem that we often encounter we make an adjustable link somewhere between the handle and the latch, a compensating linkage, compensating clip, etc. I'm not sure what this one is called but it is an integral part of the latch just below the point at which the rod interfaces with the latch. It is set at the factory after the latch and handle are attached to the door. Only after the linkage is able to establish its length at the rest position in the door does the socket headed bolt get tightened to connect both halves of the linkage together. And it should be good forever after that point. Or so the designer thought. But what happens is that there is a small differential movement of the two linkage halves every time the handle is actuated and the linkage re-adjusts over time until it gets to the end of the slot. And you have trouble getting in your door. You pull harder and harder on your handle as time goes in, and with enough cycles you break the handle.

How to fix it:

a) Straighten bend(s) in the rod to make the rod longer. This is a bad way to do it because this forces the linkage to work at a very poor angle causing wear and effort issues.

b) Adjust the compensating linkage through the door hole with an allen wrench. I've found this to be difficult even with a ball ended allen wrench on an Omni, because by the time you have a problem the bolt head is quite a ways off the hole center and likely piled full of dirt from all of the aerosol grease that's been sprayed in over the years trying to fix it. It sounds like a Daytona has a slot which may be bigger so maybe this is easier on a Daytona. If you can do this you've got at least a temporary solution for 2 minutes worth of effort. I say temporary based on the fact that the adjustment has already been done on your car at the factory and it didn't stay adjusted nor have most, and now the friction surfaces are all coated with lubricant that wasn't there when it left the factory.

c) This is what I think is the right thing to do if you care about your car. But reserve 2 hours or so to do it. Remove the trim panel. Release the nylon swing clips that hold the rods onto the latch. Remove the three philips headed screws holding the latch to the door (at the rear shutface, may require an impact driver with a #3 philips bit). Take the latch over to your workbench. See the two piece pivoting lever at the bottom of the latch that is held together with a bolt? Take the bolt out and clean the two halves and the bolt very thoroughly with brake cleaner. Put the bolt back in at the center of the slot (as a best guess) and tighten it. Now, as a safety precaution get familiar with what you can grab on the latch to cause the door to open if you happen to let the door close and latch before the rods are attached (easy mistake to make). Put the latch back in and see how the outside handle works. Its an iterative process. You'll probably need 3-4 tries to get it just right. ***Word of caution - during a crash the door handle will move a bit. Since you need the door to stay closed during a crash it is absolutely necessary to avoid having a hair trigger early release. Be sure to have a "normal" amount of lost motion in the handle before the latch releases.*** Also, an excessively early release point will leave the latch partially actuated all of the time and this will inhibit the function of the key cylinder. OK, so once you've got the adjustment the way you like it, take the latch out yet again and lock those lever halves together with whatever seems appropriate. I've used Loctite cylindrical parts locker. JB Weld, etc. should be great. TIG could be used and would be bulletproof but would kill the plating and make it vulnerable to rust. Once you’ve locked the adjustment down liberally spray the pivoting and sliding portions of the latch and handle with aerosol lithium grease and be sure to move the interfacces a lot before the solvent flashes off. While you’ve got it out do the window regulator and nite lock rod bellcrank (if there is one). For extra points you can put silicone spray on the glass runs. If you do the window bits be sure to run the glass up and down a few times and wipe the excess off the glass unitil there is no excess. Now put the door back together and pull a beer out of the fridge.

Mark

[reliantwagon]

hmm i always wondered why the passenger side outside handle didnt work... thanks man... im not gunna fix it... but still nice write up

[66CudaFormulaS]

Adjusting the rod in the door from the outside handle to the latch, and replacing the hinge pins/bushings should take care of it.

See my earlier post on the rod adjustment.

On the hinge pin replacement, build a platform to the same level as the bottom of the door when opened. This way you can knock the pins out, then slide the door on the platform away from the car, replace the bushings, slide the door back, and replace the pins.

[kcar]

I got a hinge/bushing set for my Daytona. How do you get out the bottom hinge pin? The bottom of the pin is almost touching the door. There isn't much room to knock the pin out. Any hints would be great.

[66CudaFormulaS]

To get the bottom pin out, I used 2 or 3 socket extensions. I can't remember, but one of them may have been the wobble type. The joints allow enough "curving" to kind of match the curve of the bottom of the door. Using a long extension will allow you to get below the door where you can get a good whack at it. Good luck. Rob.