door hinge lubrication

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Cleaning up my door hinges I discovered that the pin on one was willing to be removed. Previously I made a couple of abortive attempts on other hinges and decided I likely would cause a lot more damage getting them out than cleaning them up was worth. The advice I could find in the PASB online archives (thanks again!) says not to mess with them, they will likely be ruined trying to take them out. My hinges probably haven’t been greased since 1935, but all of them are still tight and don’t squeak. It appears I can get a grease gun attachment for the “china hat” style zerk fitting from Restoration Supply, but doubt it will push any grease through the solidified grease in the tiny hole, which would mean removing all the pins to clean after getting a tiny enough drill to go down it. Anyone have any experience with this?

Jim

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Guess I was a little quick to ask, answered my own question. I ran a sewing needle up and down the hole a few times to loosen up the old grease and then found my standard grease gun would hold on the fitting well enough with pressure, and yeah verily some grease went down and out the middle of the pin. 99% of the grease of course went out attachment at the zerk, but it looks mission adequate.

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James

Don’t know if this will help but I used a grease gun for chain saw to grease the bearing on the end of the bar and it worked very well and I got all the hinges to take grease with out much loss of grease.

Rich Fielder

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Thanks Rich, I’ll give that a try.

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Jim,

I wanted to remove the hinge pins on my Series 80 (front doors, top hinge) so that I could install hinge-mount sideview mirrors.

They would NOT come out!

I too removed the hinge from the door, oiled it and banged the snot out of it.

I could not get them to move!

I took them to my mechanic and he did all types of things to them, but to no avail.

He then asked me if I REALLY wanted it out, and I said yes.

He asked if he could TORCH THEM.

He did, and the pins came out.

I have a can of touch-up paint, so I then repainted them by hand.

Now, they look fine (small exposure), and the PEEP mirrors are in place and quite helpful.

If you are messing with a 95-year-old motorcar, expect to occasionally be stopped dead in your tracks for a few hours until you figure out how to execute what you thought would be a 20-minute job.

Peter

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I am a lor slower, when I get stopped dead it seems to be measured in days weeks or months! Fortunately this wasn’t one of them, as it looks like the better part of valor to leave them alone. At least I now know what the configuation is if I need too. What unscrews and what must be pressed. All of my hinges are off the car currently as I slowly work through the painting process. Three doors done so far, except for some rework. I have rigged up a vertical tree to mount the hinges to that I can get to everything that shows open and closed.

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