Cor; it's been a bit windy........
You may recall I fitted some back door stops to prevent the doors folding right back and breaking the rear light lenses.
Well they work; a huge gust of wind and............
Cracked the top left hinge. They are only ali castings.
Shall I buy one..? Where from and I will be using the van tomorrow so.........
As Mrs Beaton said so famously "First catch you rabbit" or in this case; find some steel that is the same thickness as the original bracket.
10mm plate. I don't think this one will be breaking.
The piece was marked out by drawing around the broken part but not including the pivot parts.
This is because I was in a hurry and wanted to keep the job a simple as possible.
This should help it to make sense. To make the hinge pivots I drilled a suitable bit of round bar.
I have the advantage of a small lathe in my shed so I didn't have to faff about looking for suitable tube with the right size hole through the middle.
You'll notice that the 'suitable round bar' was in fact a 12mm bolt with the head cut off.
I welded it either end both sides (not in the middle) and marked out where the holes for the bolts were going.
I didn't have time to measure anything so the holes were drilled out deliberately oversize to allow for "adjustment"
By making the pivots in one piece and then cutting out the middle ensure that the hinge pin will line up perfectly.
I'm going to post this before I lose it and carry on in another post.