Rx for Giulia doors

[Dana Loomis <dloomis@domain.elided>]

When I posted a request last week for suggestions about how open a stuck
rear door on a Giulia Super, several people wrote back saying the didn't
know how, but would I tell them if I found out.  Here's what I did.

First I tried several good suggestions I'd gotten from the Digest, ranging
from pushing out, in, up and down on the offending door to jacking up one
corner of the car so the body would flex enough to unjam the door (I
especially liked this one).  Unfortunately none of these ideas worked, so
the only thing I could think of was to  take the door off.  With the rear
doors shut, there wasn't quite enough room to get at the allen-head screws
that fasten the hinges to the car, so I drove out the hinge pins with a
punch.  Once this was done, I pulled the door outward and forward to
disengage the latch.  It was actually pretty easy.  

The hard part was making the latch cooperate.  Every time I put the door
back on, it stuck again; I ended up doing this 3 times before I figured out
what the problem was.  I finally took the whole locking mechanism off and
reassembled it on the workbench so I could see what was happening.  It
turned out that the toothed catch in the striker plate (the stationary part
of the latch attached to the car body) was dropping too low because of
wear, so that the rotating semicircular pin on the door portion of the
latch couldn't be released regardless of how the two halves of the latch
were aligned (if you've ever worked on one of these things, this will make
sense).  I made a shim for the striker out of part of an old washer, put
everything back on the car, and now the door opens and closes beautifully.
An easy job once I figured out what was needed, but getting there took hours.

Dana Loomis

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