Door Strikers - what's on the inside of the door frame?

[jharvat]

The door striker on the driver's side of my 1973 240z need help. It's secured by one nut, the rest sheared off at some point in the car's history. Well, I decided to start working on it tonight and removed the one good nut then removed the striker and its component pieces. I see, however, that the assembly was screwed into something on the inside of the door frame.

So do I need to remove that little dog-leg interior panel to get to all that hardware? What's the safest way to do that? Anyone have any pictures of what I can expect to see on the backside of that door frame?

Any assistance on this is appreciated.

S

Edited March 7, 2012 by jharvat

[EScanlon]

The screw plate for the striker on the jamb is INSIDE the plenum, so removing the interior panel will only reveal the metal backing backing the interior panel.

Sadly unless you cut a hole in the interior metal panel, or you cut the whole striker area out, you're not going to get to the back of the door jamb to access that screw plate.

Easiest fix I ever did on that was to use a bolt/nut/washer setup to tighten the screw plate up against the back of the door jamb, then tapping the screw holes to the next size. With care you won't even have to ream the striker holes.

FWIW

E

[jharvat]

After I started this thread, I found some very old posts in another part of the forum that talked about how inacessible that back plate was. The thing I was worried about was that once I removed all the screws, the back plate would fall and I'd never get to it. However, it appears that, while the plate can move for adjustments, it can't fall.

I think I will take your advice and use the one good screw hole to stabilize the back plate. Then I'll see if I can use an easy-out to remove the broken screws. If not, drilling and retapping will be Plan B.

Thanks!

[Mikes Z car]

I hope this is related enough that it isn't threadjacking but I have wondered about the possibility of cutting an access holein the metal under the finisher to access the area behind the door striker plate to clean that rust prone area towards the wheel well out and maybe periodically spray it with anti corrosion material. I take it that area must be partly structural? Is there a way to cut a hole and weld in a removable door there?

Mike

[jharvat]

Just to follow up, after liberal application of WD40, I was able to get a needle-nosed vice-grips on the end of the sheared screws and actually backed them out. As silly as it may sound, that was a pretty satisfying feeling when the last one twisted free.

Of course, two days later, I was trying to remove one of the bolts on the engine thermostat housing. It snapped like a twig. So, the victory didn't last long. Oh well, back to the easy-out.