Sliding Door adjustment

[Doc]

Nickos
It takes about five minutes to take your headlights out. Take the bulbs and parkers out and inspect your reflectors if they are dull hazy replace. Connect your bulbs up and remember your ignition coil mus be on for the headlights to work. Check brightness without them inserted in your lenses. Buy some new ones and check brightness (always handy to have spares) If obviously brighter then through your old ones away. Don't touch the bulbs with your fingers (ever even if off). If They are the same in brightness in or out Jerry Rig some leads off your battery and test the bulbs there if brightness is increased replace wirng to globes. Just testing the wiring gives out twelve volts doesn't tell you about the resistance of the circuit and under load old wiring gets hotter and resistance increases. Therefore you will need to do the long way round.

Next The Door

This will take a while
Take interior lining off sliding door. Photograph the positioning of cables as there are different flavours. Remove rear locking mechanism. Pull apart soak in petrol clean and lubricate.

Do the same for the front except with mine you couldn't pull apart so clean and lubricate best you can

Reassemble

Next remove left rear window cover housing of rear roller mechanism repair clean and lubricate (Roy has replacement rollers and bushes) reassemble.

Next
Replace Rubber Seal around door (Roy)

Adjust ment
Close the door completely and see how she hangs. If its low the bottom bracket needs more shims. I cut mine from an original.
If its hanging Ok then check striker mechanisms. Start at the front. The striker plate can be adjusted three or four millimeters up down in out and has shims align be carefully and slowly closing the door. Half tighten them and close door and they will "move to a good position. If there is not enough adjustment then the tongue mechanism can be adjusted up down.

When you have the height of the door (lower roller) The front latch aligned. Then go to the rear of the door and repeat process. The striker plate has some adjustment and the latch has some adjustment. Slow careful alignment and adjustment will end you up with a door that closes with such precision you will have the whole neighbourhood come out and you can demonstrate it to them and they will admire it and want a go.

This is the complete way if your rubbers and rollers and mechanism are all ok then just height, front then rear adjustment. My rear mechanism was just a little sticky and that was the problem with my sliding door having all the problems.

[Necro]

Go Doc Go....

You got a sticky....

Well done on the post, I have to get new bits for my door so I shall find this very helpful one day....

Necro bows to the future Kombi Guru...

I wish I had a sticky....

[NICKOS]

cheers for your help doc! this sounds quite full on, so i'll wait til the weekend. Got a mate who's great with these sorts of things, so it may help to have him hanging round when i attempt this feat!!!
let you know how it goes!

[Doc]

Go for it Nickos, it is really nice when its tuned, always telling my kids when they play their instruments doesn't matter how well you play if you are out of tune you sound like cr*p.
I also changed the upper and lower roller but that was for different issues.

[KahunaKombi]

Great post Doc - done everyting on mine except the roller and bush so guess waht I got to get.
These 2 parts may look ok but it's not until you take the cover off and have a good optic at them

[Doc]

You don't have to take the door off to change these but it is a two person job.
My suggestion is to Clean and file the "track". Its much like the bar on a chain saw and gets a very sharp bur along the top rim for the length of the channel. I remove the bur with a small file and the nylon bush then fitted much better.

[MY74VW]

This was great info. Can someone tell me how to get the external door handle off the sliding door. I have a 74 and I lashed out and bought the Bentley manual hoping that it would answer all things Kombi but so far I have been a little dissapointed. The manual relates to American Kombi's and it seems that Aussie ones had slight differences here and there. (One of those differences is the right carby but thats another story.) My centre lock is not shown in the manual and the exploded view of the other locks don't indicate anything that would prevent the handle coming out of the lock after undoing the screw on the inside.
I also don't quite understand how this lock works. The tang that engages the striker closest to the passenger door does not move when the handle is turned. The only part that moves is a piece at the top that slides in and out but doesn't seem to cause the mechanism to lock at the front end. I removed the cable that goes to the back of the door and found that I could open the door just by pulling this cable. The lock at the front seems to do nothing other than locate the front of the door.

Sorry for the long post but I'm a bit baffled.

[kommodius]

Great post Doc!
I dub thee knight of the "swish schnick" !
Great advice and well written. Definite sticky stuff!

Ray & da Boyz

[photomike666]

Great post, and now I know I need new nylon bushes, may have a go at filing the channel too.

[jb4845]

Dragging this up again as I need to know a little bit more than offered in the original post.

In the process of putting my resto back together I am up to adjusting the sliding door. I get all the stuff Doc says, but my problem is that there is only a bees-dick clearance at the rear edge of the door (at the top and bottom) and I would really feel more comfortable if the whole door was a few more mm further toward the front of the van so that it doesn't chip the edge.

So how do I do this?

I am lead to believe there is some adjustment in the mounting of the rear hinge to the door - but I feel that I have maxed this out - I have also removed the shims from the front catch in the belief that this will help the door move more forward, but not sure that made much difference - I have raised the door a little at the front to make sure that it was square in the opening - and that is where I now find myself

The door is a replacement of the original, so I knew the adjustment might be a little challenging, but this has me stumped - am I at the best point I can be now given the adjustment made?

JOSH

[GypsyWannabe]

Doc,

My passengers seem to have trouble opening and closing Janie's sliding door. I don't seem to find it a problem - I just give it a good hard yank to open and slam it pretty hard to close.

I've cleaned the tracks as best as I can with the door on.

Do you reckon I need to take it off to do it properly. I hope not because it sounds like a 2-person job and I basically have to do everything on my own.

Baz

[Doc]

Baz it is a two person job especially if never done before.....I believe the best thing also is to buy a new seal from Roy....... the most expensive you can find and replace it and then set the door up....
I still impress the neighbours with the opening and closing though my son still loves to slam it ,,.......(bloody teenagers)

[Daisy]

i recently bought how to keep your VW alive by john muir and how to restore VW bus by mark paxton these 2 books are amazing are could instruct anyone on how to do any job a must have!!!

[vinny]

Speaking to P'beaters today, he wants to sandblast the the whole lower section of Martha to see what's hiding. He reckons upwards of $450

I'm trying to make my money work for me on this resto, would I get the same effects if I just sanded it back to bare metal by hand/angle grinder myself?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Harry