03/02/10 - Door grab handles
Never
one to be slowed down, with the help of kyle (then aftter he left, some
creative 1 handed working) I'm marching forward. We finished
installing the passenger side CF door trims, as well as the passenger
upper door trim piece (the rear upper I will examine tomorrow).
It was painfully apparent that I needed a grab handle to close
the doors, so I made use of some E30 roof ingress/egress handles that
were given to me by matt (zoidberg)...
It worked out perfectly that the bolt spacing on the handles was
identical to the spacing used by the OEM door handles. The oem
door pulls attach via sheet metal screws into plastic inserts in the
door. They ALSO are affixed by a metal tab that slides into a
slot on the door. Since my roof handles didn't have that tab, nor
were the CF cards cut to allow it, I decided I needed a more solid
mount. I knocked out the plastic inserts and welded a plate over
the hole. The upper one needed to be thickened/shimmed a bit.
(you can see the factory plastic insert still installed at the middle
left of the frame) Cut me some slack, i'm welding one handed...
lefty:
I then reinstalled the doorcard and marked/drilled/tapped the new mounting points:
Then I primed it to prevent rust:
Then installed the doorcard and handle:
Current interior view:
Take care for now.
