Door and Louvre Struts

[GeneralLee01]

Last evening I installed new louvre struts from DMC and am very pleased with them. The upper ball cups were so rusted that I had to spray with WD40 and carefully work them loose, then sand and lubricate the ball studs before installing the new struts. The operation is very smooth and gradual. The doors however are another story, especially the drivers side. It feels like there is extreme tension and if you let go of the door it flies up so hard it seems it could snap something. I wonder if I should be attempting to reduce tension on the torsion bars, but the amount of rust scale I found up above make me hesitate to mess with anything.IMG_6042.jpg

[dn010]

You can remove the door struts, let the doors hang open with the torsion bar energy and see how much they are open. If my memory is fine, it should be about 2-4". If it is more or less then the bar needs to be adjusted. Adjusting the torsion bars only require you to unbolt two screws each so rust shouldn't be a big issue as far as the roof box is concerned.

[Andrew]

Did you get the soft lift door struts? I've had both over the past 20+years, soft lift struts are the way to go.

[Rich]

You can remove the door struts, let the doors hang open with the torsion bar energy and see how much they are open. If my memory is fine, it should be about 2-4". If it is more or less then the bar needs to be adjusted. Adjusting the torsion bars only require you to unbolt two screws each so rust shouldn't be a big issue as far as the roof box is concerned.

+1

Measure the door gap between the position of the lower edge of the hanging door to lower edge of closed door. Run the preload test with all the panels/parts on the door (except the lift struts). http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?1682

You do want to check your door torsion bar preload and adjust them if needed because:

a. The bars commonly get up-torqued to (mistakenly) fix doors that droop when the struts give up. You may be facing exactly this issue from a PO.
b. An over-torqued bar is bad thing for the roof box and the bar.
c. It makes the door harder to close.

Notes:
1. Soft lift struts won't address (b) or (c) but will help with door bounce as mentioned elsewhere.
2. See warnings in the linked thread about NOT adjusting the torsion bar by yourself. Preload test, yes, but not the adjustment.

I have yet to find a door torsion bar that was set too low. Only correctly or too high. And usually the latter...

[GeneralLee01]

I did some testing of the torsion bars with the struts disconnected last evening, and the drivers door seems to have too much tension. Here are some pics of the results.
IMG_6050.jpgIMG_6051.jpgIMG_6052.jpgIMG_6053.jpg

[dn010]

Your measurement should come from the bottom of the door to the sill, looks like way too much.

[GeneralLee01]

Your measurement should come from the bottom of the door to the sill, looks like way too much.

I didn't read the post about where to measure from prior to doing this last evening, but I hoped that this would still tell us what is going on. It is sounding like the driver side is definitely going to need adjusted.