How to go about replacing a door
 

Hello, I have a 1980 300td with some heavy damage to the doors on the right side. I was thinking the best course of action was to try to replace them. I have some questions about doing that though.

How do you go about disconnecting / reconnecting the electrical and vacuum tube in the accordion at the door hinge? Do you have to cut them or do they have connectors designed to be pulled apart?

Is there a way to test the power windows without hooking up power? Should I try taking a battery or something to the junk yard to try to test them?

Can I use w123 sedan doors at all on my wagon?

Any other advice or comments would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping against hope to get solid rust free doors in China Blue. Thanks.

I have pulled several doors at the yards for spares, I just cut through the vac and electrical lines. If I were removing a door on my own vehicle, I would be maticulous in removing the elec/vac lines so I could but them back through the bellows (rubber gromett) and connected back into the new door.

There are no connectors as far as I have seen. I think there is a couple metal clips inside the door that holds the yellow vac lines secure, and maybe a ziptie for the electrical.

To check a window regulator motor, I use a makita 14.4V battery, and some female connectors to push on the flat male spades. I cut off the ends of a cheap HF multimeter and soldered on the connectors.
Remove the 2 screws off the plastic connector that is screwed to the door under the panel. think one is black and other green. two are the hot wires in and the other 2 go to the motor. you have to disconnect the wires, or the juice from your battery is going through the cars circuit and won`t work the motor.

Using this battery set up is good for checking other electrical components like a blower motor.

The front Sedan and the Front wagon doors are the same. the lower rear portion of the Wagon and Sedan doors are the same, just the upper part is different, IE square window frame on the TD and sloping for the Sedan.

Practice on the JY car to learn how things come apart, so you don`t have screw up`s on your own car. PNP is my training facility, or I refere to it as PNP-U (University). I go there for my therapy sessions also.

I think the new Bellows are still available from the dealer.

Hope this helps some.


Charlie

See your BW thread for my response!

cant say about w123 but on the W124 the vacuum lines are disconnected at the floor, the electrics plug is in the pillar cavity.

Thanks for the info. That sounds like an interesting fix to test the windows.

It sounds like to do your regulator test as well as to install the door on my car I'd have to take off the door card and get at the door internals. Is that right? Is it possible to hook up the wire and vacuum hose without taking apart the door itself?

With the 123 there is the rubber connectors under the floor mat on the driver side where the lines split off.

I think the ones to the rear doors run up the "B" piller (door post) then through the rubber bellows (rubber piece that protects the vac lines and wires) and into the door. not sure how difficult it would be to pull them out of "B" piller and then reinsert them.

Might be better to remove them from the door, and reinsert them into the new door with less troubles.

I would remove the door panel to get inside the door. It would be possible I guess to pop off one corner of the panel and pry it back some. your call.

There is the 2 screws for the crome piece around the latch, 3 for the arm rest, pull out the black cup behind the chrome handle and one small screw. unscrew the lock knob and pop off the panel, and lift up to get off along the window. seems to help if the window is lowered.


Charlie

I planned on removing my 85 300D rear doors next year to do some rust repair on the inside bottom seal area. (after a year on rust repairs, I needed a break!). But, I ran into a different problem.

My cluster and console lights had failed a number of times, blowing fuse #1 (and the cluster circuit board traces :( ). I have posted about that in a different thread. Thanks to another owner (MY123ca), I looked for and found the problem was in the driver side pillar between the two doors. The wiring to the window switch would short out when the door was opened.

I opened up the door and have cut the window switch wiring at the bottom of the pillar. I was going to solder or crimp in a new section of cable.

In looking at how I would remove the wiring in order to remove the door, I see there are no disconnects inside the door. I took the window switch plug apart, but the sockets are not removable - they seem to have been installed in the plug base before being connected. There are 4 wires that come up through the pillar and another two that go to the motor.

Looks like I should install bullet or spade connectors on all 6 wires if I want to be able to remove the door at a later time?

Have not looked at vacuum tubes yet. Do they just push on the door lock mechanism? They may be a bit more difficult to feed through the pillar.

Any advice welcomed!

I replaced the RR door on my signature car before having it painted. You can disconnect the vacuum tubes at the lock actuator inside the door. I used a heat gun to remove the power window connectors after removing them from the plug, and re-soldered them when the new door was installed.

OK thanks.

I think I will install wiring disconnects at base of pillar. It should be easier to feed wires down through pillar than the other way. Glad to hear I can disconnect the vacuum tubes inside the door.

10 years later, I am at same point ;)

Back then, I did a rough repair of the rust at the bottom of the rear doors where the seal attaches. It needs doing again. I am 10 years older!

It would be a lot easier to repair the doors if I removed them first. Trying to build up with epoxy, shape and paint lying on my back at 83 does not seem like fun. I got as far as removing the door panel on the passenger side. Then I realized there was no way to disconnect the wiring. Someone said earlier that the vacuum hoses can just be pulled.

On driver side, I see from earlier posts that I installed disconnects on the wiring at the base of the pillar. Maybe that is what I need to do on passenger side too? Or maybe I can do that inside the door. I don't want to fiddle with the plug pin/sockets.

Any ideas on how to remove the door wiring/vacuum more easily?

When it comes to physically uninstalling doors, should the 4 hinge bolts be removed? Or can the hinge pins be removed?

In the end, if removing doors is too much work, maybe I do need to get down and do the rust repairs on my back :( I have the car jacked as high as my floor jack will go.

ADDED: Got the car a bit higher with 4x4 on floor jack. Have one side partly prepared. Will start new thread on that.

I feel the 10 year part of this... I did a R&R on my 85 drivers door about that long ago. I seem to recall it was not too awful. (had to respray blue to ivory)
As I recall the bellows was just a grommet type fit and so could be carefully pried/flexed loose from either end. The window wires terminated inside the door on some screw terminals and the vacuum lines were push fit to the lock actuator. Once the inside card was off it was pretty easy. Unhooked from inside the door, undid the hinge bolds on the a pillar side, and allowed the wires and vac lines to slide out the door as it was lifted away. Bellows was left connected to the car side.
Reinstall will take 2 people and/or a door holding fixture/rig. Position the door near the car and feed in the wire/lines, hand thread a bolt top and bottom hinge, reconnect stuff, work the bellows back into the hole. Thread in the remaining hinge bolts. The fun part was getting the door all aligned again, it was amazingly close right from the start but still took some coaxing and latch tweaking.
Good luck!

I can vouch that when I replaced two passenger side w123 300D doors a decade ago, a friend helped to bolt them back on. He has a good eye for alignment.
It took a few adjustments of the hinges to get good alignment.

Like other said, remove vac lines and wires from the end points of each apparatus in order to keep those lines sound and just feed through the rubber bellows.

It is a good time to inspect the metal rails of the glass for oxidation and looseness.
Swap out the rubber window 'wipers' if needed. Treat inside of door bottoms for any oxidation. Or spray with asphalt primer in order to prevent oxidation.

In my case I had to swap my regulators/motors into the donor doors and for the passenger front, replace the key tumbler with the original one so I could use original door key.

It is a two man job to reinstall and align the doors.

I have same car, but the wires that enter the door from bellows go straight to the door switch connector sockets. There are two other wires that come from the latch area that also enter the connector sockets. No screw terminals. It looked like the wires would need to be cut or the connector block disassembled in order to loosen the wires to point they could be passed through the bellows or door opening.

Sorry, I should have got a picture.

In any event, I decided that it would be less work to leave the doors on and put up with working down low on the door lower edge.

Thanks to you both for input.

Before closing things up, I took some pictures. I couldn't see how the wiring could be fed out before removing the door.

The door switch socket has wires coming through a rubber grommet that lead to the exit to the pillar - I didn't try, but doubt the socket would pass through the grommet's opening. There is also another cable coming through a different small opening from the door lock. Unless there is some way of disconnecting that at lock end, it would need to be cut or the socket disassembled.

On other side, I rewired the door due to a short in the pillar. There I cut the wires at base of pillar and in door, so didn't run into this.

Anyway, I got job done without removing door, so all is good :)

Some pictures (For my future reference ;) )
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tm59z7cgvo...iring.JPG?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5wcoo0ty33...ommet.JPG?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ydm2qh4hto...illar.JPG?dl=1

Nice follow up Graham! Congrats !