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MG MGA - Door hinge packing

I'm almost ready to hang my coupe doors and notice that in the original parts book (page R2) there are pieces of hinge packing, R59. This packing piece is shown as being between the hinge and the body pillar. Is this correct, and are there 4 of them, ie, one on each hinge?
When I dismantled the car a couple of years ago, I found only one packing piece, and it was beween the hinge and the door, if I remember correctly.
Perhaps the illustration in the parts book is incorrect. (Like the one at the top of the same page which shows the safety latch facing the wrong way)
Thanks for your help on this.
Peter.
P. Tilbury

The packers are for lining up the door gaps and can be placed where required.
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

Peter, there was only one packing piece on one hinge when I took the doors off my coupe a few years ago. Robert is correct, the packing shims are used only as needed.

George
G Goeppner

The specified quantity is "A/R", meaning "As Required". As mentioned, these shims are used for aligning the door hinges and latches, which is for some people as much art as science. I have a multitude of tech articles on my web site attempting to reduce this "perceived" art to pure science so (hopefully) anyone can do it. See articles here:
http://mgaguru.com/mgtech/body/bd103a.htm
http://mgaguru.com/mgtech/body/bd103b.htm
http://mgaguru.com/mgtech/body/bd103d.htm
Near the end I describe how I align door hinges in minutes using no shims at all.
Barney Gaylord

Thank you Bob, George, and Barney.
I had read the Guru pages, but did not see the shims described. Mine is a piece of steel about 1/8" thick, so the original alignment must have been way out, and it was fitted between the hinge and the door, not between the hinge and the pillar where you would expect it to be, and as is shown in the parts book.
Cecilia tells me the shims are actually thin fibreboard, so my steel one must have been made by the PO.
I'll make some up as I need them. By the way Barney, the factory parts book lists these as "4 per car" under qty, not A/R, so perhaps they put one on each hinge. George - how thick was your one packing piece?
Peter.
P. Tilbury

In my opinion
I believe the reason they are listed as 4 per car is that if you start off with a door packer per hinge it can then equally be removed for adjustment just as it can be added to.
So the standard is to have one fitted to each hinge to begin with. When the car got to the end of the production line the finishers could remove a packer just as easy as they could add one to ensure a nice fit
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

There were two types of door hinge and there was a redesign which, according to Barney, was in 1958. There were two design changes. I’ve got two complete sets, one 1960 and the other 1957 and the first change apparent is the hinge opening angle which on the earlier type I measured at 64 degrees and on the second 78 degrees (same on all four of each). The second difference is that the hinge leaf facing the A-pillar is cranked near the hinge pin on the earlier one and it is straight on the later one. I’ve taken a picture of one from each set to show this.

You can see that the consequence of this crank is that the gap between hinge leaves when closed, corresponding to a shut door, is significantly less than for the later hinge. I measure 1/8” for the earlier one and 5/16” for the later type.
Now, the hinge leaves are nominally 1/4 inch thick and so are the recesses in the both door and pillar. So when the door is mounted without any shims the door gap (inside) is the same as the hinge leaf gap.
As the door width is 29 “ and the door frame width is 29.75” there would be a 3/8” gap each side. Something has to be allowed for the shut face panel which is probably around 1/16 to 1/8” therefore with the door centrally placed, and I’m sure this would have been the car designer’s intention to place it centrally, then the door gap at the front A-pillar end would be around 5/16”. This measurement is the same as the later hinge leaf gap so I reckon shims were not required for the later hinge whereas for the earlier hinge standard shims of 3/16” thickness would have been required.

You have to ask yourself why was there a hinge design change in 1958? I don’t think the fact that the earlier doors didn’t open as wide would have been a strong enough reason.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if the car builders found,after a few years experience of producing the car, that the same thickness of shim was being used day after day and as it was more trouble using them the shim was designed out by changing the hinge. So it would have been a small cost reduction; the cost of redesigning and making a new cast iron hinge wouldn't have been too great.

I’m guessing that both Peter’s and George’s cars have the later hinges and that the single piece of shim they've found is an aftermarket addition by a previous owner perhaps to correct an age related door sag. If not then my theory goes out of the window!

To my mind the earlier hinge has an advantage to the restorer in that by increasing or decreasing the standard shim thickness the door gaps can be adjusted either way. For the later hinge you can increase the door gap(front) but you can’t reduce it because there are no shims to remove. So if anyone replaces an A-pillar with a later hinge they have to be spot on to avoid too wide a door gap.

Sorry for going on about this but you can tell I've thought a bit about hinges in restoring my own car body! ..................... Mike



m.j. moore

On May 22, 1957 BMC Canada issued a Service Bulletin advising dealers that there could be problems with MGA coupe door clearance and advised them to fit locally made shims.

John DeWolf

Mike, -- Do the hinges in your picture have any numbers stamped on them? Easy to tell from shape of the stop ears that the top one is the early design and bottom one is that later design that will open farther. Change point was at car no. 56069.

The early hinges had LH and RH part numbers (no idea why) and no shim. Later hinges were same number both sides with the packing piece added at that production point (not deleted). The reason I said quantity of packing is "A/R" is because later cars had them and earlier cars not, but any car could have a packing piece added or deleted as a field fix. Rumor is that the assembly workers were fond of bending hinges as a quick adjustment rather than swapping shims.

As far as I know (so far) all factory hinges were originally flat in standard design, but some may have been bent for assembly adjustment with no change of part number. I am not yet convinced that there was ever a third design. I have a pair of each type on my car, because I got some spares with replacement doors some years ago, and also replaced a broken hinge with a new aftermarket part more recently. All of my hinges are flat.

I have one other report of such an offset hinge (4 on 1 car) about 5 years ago (and I do have the stamping number), but I have always attributed this offset to either a body factory adjustment or a field fix after body repairs. I have in fact adjusted a hinge in this manner myself using a torch and a vice.

Distance between A and B pillars on these cars varies considerably, far more than just the thickness of one or two shims. My car has pillar spacing 1/4-inch wider on one side than the other, and I've had it long enough (early enough) to know that it is in this form as original factory issue, not from a field fix.

I have always suspected that the body factory assembly workers had a few different hinge shapes close at hand while assembling these things. Call them pre-bent hinges, thicker or thinner than standard size. Pillar spacing and door length final sizes may have been marked on the body parts before assembly, which would make it easy to select the right size hinges on first grab.

I also think the soft fiber shims were intended to be originally used exactly 1 per hinge in all cars (once the packing pieces were introduced), seldom more or less, as they can be used to fine tune alignment rather than as compensation for larger parts variations. You can take advantage of the softness of these shims to affect fine tuning of the thickness (making them slightly wedge shape) while tightening the screws. I have a description of this process in my web pages (noted above). So a few pennies per shim added to original materials cost can actually yield a substantial labor cost reduction.
Barney Gaylord

Barney, Sorry I should have put which hinge was which on the photo. The top one is actually 1960 and the bottom one with the head on the hinge pin and with the crank is the 1957. As for numbers the earlier cranked hinges just have one number on the inside of each leaf near to the pin. Three of the four door leaves have 5 on them and the fourth 3 whereas the pillar leaves have respectively 7,4,1,3. They make no sense!
The later hinges all have the number 14411 on each door leaf and 14400 on each pillar leaf. All these numbers appear to have been built into the mould and near these numbers is presumably the manufacturer's emblem which is JMo surrounded by a 'C'.
I suppose the bends in the earlier hinges could have been made post casting but there's no sign either of any vice marks or heat stains.
The later ones do seem to be a different design because not only has the pillar leaf been beefed up with more metal near the pin but the hinge pin axis is further away from the door viz. 0.5" compared with 5/16 " on the earlier type. This can be seen from the photo above. I think this would have the effect of lessening the chance of the door fouling the front wing on opening which was the subject of John DeWolf's posting. Maybe this was the reason for redesign?..............Mike
m.j. moore

This thread was discussed between 22/01/2010 and 25/01/2010

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