Redneck Door Opening Handkes

[wrp]

I cringe every time I post what I am doing on here. Compared to the work you guys do it is daunting to put my stuff up. Still I have always gotten great suggestions from you all so here goes. I have been wrestling with the door openers for quite a while. My issue is when I got the door aligned then the least bind in the latch mechanism would also cause a bind when you tried to used the door pulls. The old school half moons looked great but I went ahead and searched around as best as I could to find a solution for me. I found these ratty handles at the hardware store. I figures heck they are threaded and if they work I can get a machine shop to make be a better set, or do it myself., Anyhow I installed the first one on the driver's side. I have used it for about 8 months. The door stays solid. It is aligned and pressure to pop the door is negligible. I think extending the leverage on the little tab at the top of the latch has made a good difference. Today I put on the passenger side and the door just works better now. I have a lot of fitment let on the passenger side, probably going to take some carbon fiber and fiberglass molding as the door skin seems warped. But the handles and latches work. IMG_0869.jpg

Big problem is the mess I made of the panels that came with the kit. Whenever I try to tighten the panels down they interfere with the latches so I just cut everything away so that nothing contacted the latch or handles. Door is amazingly smooth on bot5h side. So I figured I would make a panel to cover the door panel up front. I am thinking carbon fiber though I might well go to aluminum. So I cut out a template IMG_0856.jpgIMG_0857.jpgIMG_0858.jpg

I used an old piece of styrofoam to transfer the shape of the template to. Then cut it out with a hot-knife. Once cut I sanded the e3dges and measured the handle travel access. One of the problems is to put the handle on before or after the panel. Ion the end the handles will protrude through the paned enough I can get a wrench on them and tighten them down .IMG_0860.jpgIMG_0861.jpgIMG_0862.jpgIMG_0864.jpgIMG_0866.jpg