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Metal Half-doors |
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Let's face it, driving around in a Samurai with no doors on is way cool, but, there are times when you want to have a little extra side protection from mud/rocks/collisions/etc while still maintaining that open air feeling. Since we got an extra door when we bought our Samurai, the only logical thing to do was buy another one and hack them up into half-doors. Here are some pictures and details of what we did... |
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1) First thing we did was strip the doors. That meant taking off the inside door panel, removing the glass, winder mechanism, handles, etc. The only thing we left in was the latch mechanism.
2) Then we marked out the outline of what we wanted the door to look like after we had cut it out. We used a grinder with a cutting disc to cut the top of the door off. The first picture shows the door just after we hacked the top off. The third picture shows the half-door in relation to the stock full-door.
3) Then we cut some sheet metal and welded it to the top of the door to cover up the cut. We also welded up the keyhole since we weren't going to be using it anymore. After welding, we used the grinder to smooth out the edges.
4) Once the welding and grinding was done we used some spot puddy to smooth out the door a bit - as shown in the last picture. |
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5) Now the coolest mod of all. Since we had no external door handle and we didn't want to have to reach inside to open the door each time, we came up with this solution. We drilled a hole in the top of the door directly over the door-openning mechanism. If you have a close look at one of these, all you have to do is push down on the top of the linkage and it will open the door. We welded in a small tube directly over-top of this linkage and inserted a round-headed bolt. Then we screwed two nuts on the bottom, one to hold the bolt in and one to use to adjust the height of it. Now all we have to do is give the "button" a little push and voila! the door pops open. Works like a charm, and when you want to get out you put your arm back and hit the button with your elbow and the door opens. |
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