Project Pickle - backdoor action (part 9.4)

In the strictest sense this was an unnecessary purchase. I mean the Pickle came with a completely bent and rusty backdoor and whilst it is bad, it is definitely still salvageable . Yet still a much better one came up (almost) locally.

Here's one for those who are afraid of taking out glass on your own: Don't be. The rubber was too hard, to just be able to push it out, but with a bit soapy water and a spatula, I pryed the rubber off the glass where it was stuck on really good. After that it was literally just as the picture suggests: fold the rubber over and slowly work your way round. Much easier with two or three of those, so the old rubber doesn't snap back into place all the time.

Remember (or better mark) the orientation of both the rubber seal and the window and reinstall will hardly be a ten minute job. Also: store the gasket installed on the plane of glass this makes it much less likely to chip a corner or the like.

As it came without a door handle or locking mechanism, I took all of that from the original rear door. There's really just two important clips you have to be aware of: the red one for the actual door handle and the metal clip holding the actual locking barrel in place.

Once you know how to do it, the whole paint and primer thing is pretty straightforward.

As you can see in the background, I wrapped the car up and sprayed the roof again. (Ultimately doing it two or three times just to make sure.)

To be fair, if the individual components react the way they are supposed to, the results are pretty good. 

In defense of the seller of the backdoor, it was never advertised as accident free, but removing the bondo definitely shaved off a pound or more (seriously) and pushing it back made it look a lot less worse than it was.