So I decided to have my doors, but couldnt just shorten the factory ***embly because of window track and other **** in the way. The car is a 1950 Pontiac. Chopolds suggested his homemade push ****on idea, and I looked at it, and figured it would work swell. Never having done this, I was a bit skittish at first, and worried about space. Initial guesstimations and measuring on the fly looked like I would have some issues with room. Also, I figured the ****on would be mounted at perfect vertical, so either the top of it would be outside the contour of the body, or the bottom would be below the contour. Because of this, and because I thought it might just be kind neat, I decided to add a small accent around the ****on hole, and envisioned a small ring around it of about 1/4 thickness that would fade into the surrounding door metal. The results werent bad at all, and with a little body filler, the transition from ring to door should be pretty nice. Again, thanks to Chopolds, I was able to shave my door handles on the mega-cheap using his simple design for homemade push ****ons. First off, pictures of the factory setup. First is the factorys ****on with lock mechanism. Note the long strip of metal used to actuate the latch from outside. This engages the latch from the opposite side of the upper left corner as visible in the second picture.
From his diagram (Ill post it at the end) I fabricated my own push ****on system, shown below. The ****on is a 1 freeze plug, the tube is 1.06 ID seamless tube. I cut off something like 2 inches to work with when mocking this up so I could trim down later. A bit thick, but easy to work with and durable. The metal strip is the same as pictured in the factory parts, just shortened and welded to the freeze plug at 90*, centered. The spring is also from the factory setup, and I found that cutting the long factory spring in half worked rather well in the now-reduced ****on space inside the door. I closed one end of the tube except for the slit for the strip with 18 gauge sheetmetal. I considered closing it off so the ****ons shaft could have little to no room for side to side travel, but because the factory latch mechanism had a cup to hold the strips end, this was unnecessary so long as I had the strip cut to proper length, in this case 2 7/16 which placed the ****ons surface just under a 1/4 outside of the door. This worked out to being flush with the detail ring I added, shown later. To hold the ****on in, I drilled the strip, which is right around 1/8 x 1/4 in the cross section to insert a 1/16 x 1/2 cotter pin. Before this, I determined the depth that I wanted, and the needed length of the actuator strip by placing the uncut strip into the door opening and into the cup on the latch mechanism, and measuring to place the freeze plug where it needed to be. I found the location needed for the cotter pin hole by mocking up the tube in the door, and putting the ****on ***embly into the tube, seating the other end in the latchs cup, and marking inside the tube where the ****ons outer surface was. Once removed from the door, I placed the ****on at this position and marked the spot for the cotter pin hole, drilled it, and moved on to the next step.
I cut a rough access hole into the door side that will be cleaned up and addressed later with either a small black rubber flap cover or screwed on metal patch to get the cotter pin out, as it is just about impossible to do so with your hands from inside the door, and definitely impossible to bend out the ends of the cotter pin once finished. This is a step that should be done a bit earlier on, as it might help in figured the length of the actuator strip and the location of the cotter pin hole. It doesnt look pretty yet, but will be alright once cleaned up, and very useful to shoot the ****on ***embly with oil to keep it operating smoothly.
Once all of the parts were finished, I welded the tube in by inserting the whole ***embly into the hole and into the latch, and tacking it. Once tacked securely, I removed the ****on, spring, cotter pin and door latch (heres where the access hole will come in handy!) to prevent damage during welding and grinding. Once safe to continue, I tacked in between the four previous tacks to securely weld the pipe into the door, allowing time to cool in between, and ground them slightly to give me room for the detail ring I wanted to add.
With the tube in, I then constructed the detail ring from 1/4 steel rod using an oxy-acetylene torch to heat and bend the rod, which I tacked to the extra length of tube. Once bent around to itself, I cut the remaining footage of steel so that just enough would be left to bend down onto the other end of the rod, closing the circle. This was done by heating it, just as I did the rest of the ring, and hammering it gently into the proper position. I then tacked both ends together, and cut the tack holding the ring to the pipe. I final welded the ring together, and used the belt sander to restore the roundness to the welded area.
I then placed the ring on the tube and welded it, again allowing time for cooling. Once welded, slow use of a cut off disc to minimize heat was helpful to cut off excess tube.
once cut, I simply used a flapweel of 80 grit, a cut off disc, and a grinding disc to rough in the shape, and hand filed the ring into final shape, including some rounding on the inner lip of the ring to make a surface that paint will stick to, and keep with the ring accent that I decided to go with. Final picture shows the primered ****on installed in the ring, held in place with the cotter pin placed in its hole, but not bent to lock it yet. Not bad for never doing this kinda stuff before. The ring is a bit flat, as it is essentially 1/4 rod with additional material inside in the form of the tubings walls. Were I to do it again, I would likely use 1/8 or 3/16 rod, but this should do fine. I like it alright, and it looks different in a good way I think/hope. If you dont want the ring at all, just do what I did until then. Hope this helps somebody the way it did me. THANKS again to CHOPOLDS for his idea, this is just my interpretation of it. Hope ya like it.
and lastly, Chopolds' schematic sketch. all told, i think i have less than 15 bucks in everything i used to do this. to make the car secure, i will use another of chopolds' ideas, and use a key-operated window switch from a station wagon to lock and unlock the car via power door lock solenoids for a nissan sentra i got on ebay. they were 15 bucks for a pair, omega was the brand. they might be pieces of ****, but they probably won't fail at the same time, allowing me to fix them both with good ones, and i'll be sure to have another way in. i'll show you how i hook them up when i get to it, but i'll probably just connect them to the factory lock's lever and mount them below the bottom of the window track.
oh, and the last pic of the ****on in the ring looks kinda lopsided due to reflection of the flash and all that. it really is alot more true in form than the pic shows.
Cool idea. I love to see this sort of thing. Gives me all the more ideas for my own car. I hadn't paid any heed to my door handles yet, but I have the house door style, with the big lever you have to twist, so shaving them could be a h***le. Anybody got any suggestions? Paul
yeah, it turned out alot better than i thought it might, and was actually pretty easy in comparison to patching panels, which i'm learning at too. plus, it'll make my four door look a helluva lot better.
If you look at subaru hatchbacks from the 80's (and alot of other small cars) they had a keyed ****on for the rear hatch. Push to open, turn the key to lock. You could put that in place of the freeze plug and be able to lock the door.
it'll fit so long as that ****on is about 1/4" deep and has about 3/8 of an inch of travel. see the rusty obstruction to the right of the tube in the access hole picture? that's window track. the metal strip is thin like that to barely miss it as it p***es through the door. believe me, if i could have used the factory lock ****ons or any other lock ****on in any way, i'd have made a post about them. as it is, using anything with a key would stick it out of the door about an inch, so there wouldn't be much point to bother shaving anything. the idea of me doing it this way is because there's really no room to do much else, save a total electronic popper setup. i guess i just had the thought that it was cool that i made something myself to get it to work.
NO, Chromed, it's very cool, and looks way better than a key (smoother). I'm just paranoid about not being able to lock a car, and have had enough dead batteries to not use electric locks. I'm saving your pics for future use, in case my idea won't fit on my plymouth.
they seem to be. the first patch on the lower door looked half nasty, but i've really improved in panel fit and reducing warping in the last one i did. tomorrow i start on the rear driver's side door, and have really set my goal at finishing it in terms of shaving and patching. final body work will be done a little closer to painting. the real challenge will be in that rear door. the front doors have much less of a compund curve to them, whereas i might need to get creative for the rear door. we'll see! thanks again, chopolds, VERY much appreciated. the point about fearing the battery dying is a pretty good one, for me though, i'll risk it if it means making my abundance of doorsa little more low-key. if i come across an emergency brake cable, i might try to engineer an emergency pull cable to open one of the rear doors from inside the trunk, if it will snake up and back to the latch. fun stuff, though.
thats the idea. initial estimates point to about may, but it'll be there, man. i think i can get the body done this month, too. hope so. i was out in the garage till about 1 am last night, got alot done. i'll be seein ya there, man, WITH my car this time.
My 95 Rodeo has a nice keyed SS push ****on for the rear tailgate, 95's should just be hitting the pick and pulls about now...
Hey. Very lovely. I had also the idea of pushed ****on, for my Gaz 24 Volga, but I still have'nt tried it. Now I can see, that it's really working too. I will look for the tailgate ****on too. Thanks a lot, got some new ideas now
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