A door in a door…
Keeping with the pattern of working from the outside in, the next step was the rear door. The truck came with two good size barn doors (55” wide x 70 ¾” tall), but they can only be closed and locked from the outside. The latching system uses the typical vertical torsion bar with cams top middle and bottom. It’s all very strong and secure but useless for locking yourself inside, and worse yet, very easy for someone to lock you in.
I hit upon the idea of putting a door in one of the doors, specifically the left side barn door. The first problem was that the big strap type hinges extended well into the door interior leaving not enough room for a decent size door. I didn’t want to compromise their strength, so I removed the hinges, cut off their tails, welded them back on with a 90 degree bend, and then remounted the door. It all sounds rather easy, but that’s a week end right there.
Now the door I just put back up, which weighs about 80 pounds, could come down so I could cut the door in the door. The inner panel is FRP with some fiberboard filler and an aluminum inner skin. Fortunately the carbide tipped blade on my skill saw can cut aluminum. I don’t like doing it, but it can be done. If you haven’t caught on yet, the pattern here is that I set myself some task, do it stupidly with the wrong tools because that is all I have, and then hope to heal up later. The job got done, and with gloves and what not, it only hurt a little bit. Actually it wasn’t that bad, but those sharp little aluminum chips come flying out of there with some sting on them. Once the door opening was cut, the inner piece that came out had to be trimmed to size. No pain, no gain.
The door, which is now a frame had to be framed out on the inside with heavy duty 1 ½” aluminum U channel. That was reinforced on the corners with steel corner brackets and more stainless steel pop rivets to try and make up for the strength that was lost when the center section was removed. The aluminum U channel was all recycled from the original box interior. Since there weren’t enough pieces that were long enough. It had to be pieced together a bit. That meant more joints to be carefully cut with a hack saw and then filed to a perfect (OK fairly decent) fit. It’s all held together with stainless steel flat head self tapping screws which means everything has to be pre-drilled and countersunk.
The new inner door was framed out with 1 ½” aluminum channel, just like the door/frame, but with the channel on the outside. The outer flange was made from 2” by 1/8” flat aluminum stock. The idea was that this aluminum flange would use a compression type rubber weather strip and hopefully seal to the frame/door. The clearance from the door to the frame was 1/8” all around, and the clearance from the front flange to the front face of the door/frame was also 1/8” for the fully compressed weather strip.
The hinges are 3 each heavy duty stainless steel door hinges. They are usually folded back on themselves and are trapped between the door and the frame, but in this case they are mounted flat on the front of the door. That implies that the bolts or screws that hold them on are readily accessible, which means a thief could just unbolt the door and walk right in. Even if the aforementioned thief has the right wrenches, I used a little bit of locktite and set it up so the nuts on the inside would just spin, so it won’t do him any good.
I used a standard lockset, meaning stainless steel locking door knob and dead bolt available at any hardware store. From the outside the door sits very high up off the ground, so the lockset needs to be set low in the door. From the inside that puts the lockset very low down, so it’s a compromise. I set the deadbolt below the door knob so I wouldn’t have to reach up and over the door knob to insert the key from the outside.
The door was built out in thickness to 1 ½” in the area of the lockset, and armored both sides with 1/8” thick aluminum, just in the area of the lockset. That meant that I needed to buy good quality bi-metal hole saws to drill the holes for the lockset. The cheap hole saws that they sometimes sell for do it yourselfers to use once on a wooden door and then throw away probably wouldn’t work on aluminum. Normally the latches would be inset on a wooden door and the steel striker plate would be inset in a wooden door jam, but milling out the aluminum would have been more difficult, and unnecessary. The aluminum frame is strong enough to need no additional striker plate, and the latch face plates can stand slightly proud of the door surface because there is 1/8” clearance between the door and the frame.
Once the lockset was installed, I could see exactly where the holes needed to be made in the door jam (striker plate) and that was just a matter of drilling, grinding, filing, worrying, and swearing until they were hogged out to the right size and location. That’s actually a bit touchy because the exact location of the hole for the door latch (not the deadbolt) sets the compression depth for the weather strip. Too tight and the door won’t close. Too loose and the weather strip won’t seal properly.
When it was all done and fitted perfectly, I took it all apart and caulked the heck out of everything, including every exposed FRP edge and screw hole, and then put it all back together. My 80 pound door was now about 100 pounds of door in a door and was a female dog to lift back up and mount to the back of the truck. I ended up using a car jack (scissor type) to hold it in place while I got the outer hinge bolts in. Working by myself is not always the smartest or easiest way to get things done.
To be continued…
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