Hidden Door Hinges- Opinions sought

[Jeff Parker]

So far, I have found 3 manufacturers of Automotive Hidden Door Hinges.

Hagan, the cadillacs, at $350 (Best $ I found) Holds door open with spring detent, and has 3D adjustability without having to shim it.

Rocky's (Only see pics, no specs) (no spring detent that I see, not sure about 3d adjustability) For $300, it includes the bear paws and installation kit.

Autolocs (Haven't heard any positive comments yet...)


I would like to get your opinions on any of the one I have mentioned , or even if you know of other manufacturers.

Thanks,
Jeff

[gravy]

hi jeff


i've not bought any hidden hinges from rocky's but i have used them many times for other products. they are verrrry verrrry good people to deal with.


johnny

[Rodbuilder]

HI jeff, I have used just about all of the hidden hinge hinge kits available and even made my own. But for the money you can not beat the hagan hinge kit it comes with everything you will need and the quality is very good. And the way that they adjust works great it makes adjusting alot easier. All of these type of hinges will work in most street rod doors but not all some it gets really tight at the glass channel in the door on some cars.I had one car a 1933 plymouth coupe that I was not able to use all of the plates for adjusting that it comes with but still made it anyway and works fine. The placement of the window channel in the door and by placement I mean the distance from the side of the channel to the inside surface of the steel door panel. This distance is usually closer on the top hinge at the rear of the door. And you most allways have to bend the hinges a little to make them parallel with the door panel.(Do not bend them like they show do it in a vice or somthing else) Anyway it is a very good kit comes with video and written instructions. I hope this helps if you have any question just ask. Gene The Rod Works

[Jeff Parker]

Thanks guys! I bought a set of Hagans from Kenny's Rod & Custom in Ohio. Real nice guy. Went through and explained all the plus's and minus's of each hinge.

[Rodbuilder]

I know Kenny and Brian and they are real good guys to work with Good choice!!

[Rob Murray]

i would ditto Gene. all the fittment issues work great. but the thing i think still makes them great is the detents. nothing sucks worse than the doors hugging all over you when you are getting in or out.... or loading the car for a trip. you could detent others but that is time spent.

[Mathius]

Are any of these really worth $300-400 vs. making your own? I've taken a gander at a few kits, and they don't look all that hard to make.

Mathius

[Peter Miles]

Are any of these really worth $300-400 vs. making your own? I've taken a gander at a few kits, and they don't look all that hard to make.


Like most things, I suppose it depends upon how good you are (and what tools you have available) versus the cost of your time.

How much bind will your door have if there is a difference of 1 or 2 degrees of angular alignment of the pivots within the two hinges that you build? I suppose that if you play with it long enough you can attach them so that the effective alignment is correct.

But if it takes you two months to generate the spare cash to buy a set, you can afford a lot of time to tweak the ones you build.

[Mathius]

Ok, I'm going to have to ask you to clarify that. I don't know if you're talking in terms of my skills, or if there's some aspect involved that I don't understand. I'm not taking offense, I just don't understand where you're coming from.

While my dad has very limited metal working skills, I took up the trade from vocational skill and self teaching, but he did teach me a small amount of wood crafting. One of the first things he taught me which I think applies to metal working also, is measure twice, cut once.

It seems to me that if you make sure you align everything plumb and square before welding, or cutting, your pieces should come out right the first time.

Unless... There's some aspect of the design that I'm missing here, in which case you'll have to fill me in.

Again, I'm not being defensive, I just want to know what you meant. If there's something I'm not understanding here, by all means, teach me, that was the point of my question in the first place.

Mathius

[kustomizingkid]

Mathius technically if you line everything up measure twice cut once it should come out right. I don't know about you but in my experience it usually doesn't work like that. If every time you cut something fit weld it and it comes out perfect all the time you have some amazing skill.

Brandon McCarthy

[Peter Miles]

Yes, Mathius - I was not attacking you or your skills at all.


It was written more from my experiences and limited skill levels than anything else.

Peter

[Mathius]

Yes, Mathius - I was not attacking you or your skills at all.


It was written more from my experiences and limited skill levels than anything else.

Peter

Like I said, I wasn't trying to be defensive, I wasn't taking it as an attack.


Let me ask a few questions about design. Two points here that I do question. What have you guys used for a pivot point, and how have you mounted them to the doors?

As far as the pivot goes, I have basically considered using some tubing and a rod to act as a pin type hinge, possibly weld a stop on the top of one end to keep the pin from going through, or maybe adapt a GM door pin.

As far as mounting them goes, one of the nice features I've noticed in the quote-unquote kits out there, is most of them seem to have a locking type setup where it looks like you can actually remove the doors fairly easily as the piece that mounts to the doors has a keyhole type setup that just slides in place.

My concern would be bracing the door. I can't imagine just welding the hinges to the inner doorskin would be all that strong without some kind of bracing. My question is, what would be sufficient. I've seen a lot of setups where they've basically 'boxed in' the skin by adding extra sheet metal in various places to close up factory holes in order to, in theory, strengthen the door. I think a stronger setup would be to somehow put a tube frame inside the door, but in this case I question that design because of added weight, room for door glass, and probably a few other reasons I haven't thought of at this point.

Lastly, an area a lot of DIY'ers fail to address is bracing the B-pillar. Most cars weren't designed from the factory with the intent to have weight dragging on this pillar. My '76 Malibu has maybe a 1 or 2" lip, and then the sheet metal is simply pinched over the inner panel. I will probably add a small 1x1 1/8th inch brace running from the floor to the ceiling, which I will wrap the inner sheet metal around to not only strengthen it, but cover up my brace and make it look factory. I have yet to devise how I will install the 1x1 though. A diagnonal brace running from the vertical 1x1 to the floor may be sufficient, but again how much strength am I actually adding? I would think that the 1x1 itself would be fairly strong to mount a door to, especially when braced additionally with sheet metal, but then just welding it in place to the existing sheet metal isn't really adding strength is it? It's still putting weight on the factory sheet metal. On the flip side, adding a cage all around the car just to run suicide doors is overkill and rediculous.

What kind of setups have you guys used? I realize this will almost certainly be a different application for every car.

Mathius

[Jeff Parker]

Mathius-
Can you build them? Sure. Its all about the design features though. A simple bolt and some bushings welded to box tubing, along with bent flat stock CAN be made to work. You are paying for the engineering, and the ease of installation. If you had a set next to you to copy, its be easy enough.

The Hagans are the only ones to have a spring detent, so the door won't whack you in the shins, when the wind blows it closed as your getting out.

The Autolocs, Rocky's and Carolina Fabrications(?) do not offer that.

Also, they have the hidden door switch for your dome lights.

[Rodbuilder]

Mathis, lets say you have all the skills and tools needed, to me it is then are you doing this for yourself or to make money by doing it to someone else's car if this is the case time is a factor and you will spend alot of time making the hinges where you could be installing them on the car instead.But if you are goint to make a set the most important parts are the hinges need to be bent the same to start out, so that when you mount the tubing for the hinge pins that these are the same distance from the hinges flat surface ( as if the hinge is laying flat on its back with the pin parallel to the ground. The second thing is that the (2) pieces of tubing that you use for the pins to go through must be parallel to the flat side of the hinge and in line with each other,and must also be verticle when the hinge is standing on its side(as how it would be when mounted in the car). Both hinges must be the same in all dimensions so when they are mounted in the car they will not bind and wear out bushings. Now the 1x1 tubing works great I use 1/8 wall no need to worry about weight in a street rod. But to answer your question yes you must strengthen this area just welding to the door jamb is not enough.I put a verticle 1x1 tube going from the floor up the side of both hinges and weld this in,then run a angled tube down and back off of the verticle tube to the floor(you can put little plates under the tubes to spread the load out if you want).I then run a horizontal tube between the verticle tube and the angled tube about half way down to add strength to the triangle.Usually there is a structure for hinge mounting for the trunk lid you can also brace to this in most cases for some extra strength.But don't forget that you have to put interior in the car so keep this in mind when you run these tubes because panels have to be put over them. Anyway I hope all of this confusion helps :-D :-D

[anders nørgaard]

Jeff,

Here's a thread on hidden hinges, Pedalcar started a while back:

http://www.metalmeet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2205&page=1&pp=10

More pics in his galleryhttp://www.metalmeet.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Jeff Parker]

Hi Anders,
I bought the Hagans. As a matter of fact, they are already installed. I was at Dutch's the week of the 7th. We installed the hinges and chopped the top on my 39 Chevy. The car looks AWESOME.

Thanks again to Dutch and Linda ("Dutchess" Lol) for putting up with me for a WHOLE WEEK! Gotta say, it was the best vacation I have had since I was 18 and stayed at a cheerleaders house for a week.

Got home friday night, and Sunday came down with a whopper of a cold, that turned to bronchitis. Still feeling lousy, but back at work!



Mathius,
After installing these hinges, you PROBABLY could build them. But I don't think it would be cost effective. If you had a spare set to copy , or some REALLY detailed drawings, it wouldn't be bad. Then hunting down the correct material thickness's. Machining the parts sourcing the special hardware... I would GUESS it would take around 20-25 hours to build a Hagan replica. Maybe $40 in raw materials? Not sure about the ball detent cost.

If you call Hagan, they will send you a video for free. It goes over the installation. The sheetmetal door reinforcement isn't enough, IMO. We had to add a small piece of channel in the door. I conventionally swung the door. No suicide.

[Tony Sanchez]

---Several years back I worked on a magazine article on installing hidden hinges. The hinges were provided by Hagan, they also provided a video on the installiation. there was also a hot line to call with questions. The installation instructions and the installation were very easy to follow.
I do not think that making your own hinges would be cost effective. I do know that Hagan has put a lot of engineering and time into developing their hinges.
---Tony.