Suicide Doors

[LVMarauder]

How great would those look. I've seen some kits on Ebay claiming to be "Universal Kits" but listed for Marauders. Now What i want to know is are these for real? Could I really buy one of these and mod my rear doors like that, I know it will be more to repaint the car/ doors and move the handles, but it would looks so ****ing sweet it would be worth it.

[bigslim]

The long term problem people have with these is that the rear pillar is not strong enough to hold the extra weight. The doors usually end up sagging due to this.

[LVMarauder]

That sucks, can you elaborate more on sagging, anyway to overcome it?

[bigslim]

The doors will usually start to hang lower in the front due to rear pillars not being strong enough to hold the weight of the door. You would have to do some reinforcing in the rear pillars to make the doors hang in line. This is why these conversions are so expensive.

[Warpath]

I don't think you can use the kit on the front doors. There isn't enough room. The kit I have seen requires the hinge to go fairly deep into the body. I think it would only work for the rear doors. The rear doors may have enough structure to support the door. Here's the kit I've seen:

http://www.thehoffmangroup.com:16080/Autoloc/Products/Products_HDHIN.lasso

[MaLo03]

I don't think you can use the kit on the front doors. There isn't enough room. The kit I have seen requires the hinge to go fairly deep into the body. I think it would only work for the rear doors. The rear doors may have enough structure to support the door. Here's the kit I've seen:

http://www.thehoffmangroup.com:16080/Autoloc/Products/Products_HDHIN.lasso
ALSO: For this to work long term will take alot of mods to the REAR doors. Lots of metal cutting and adding metal. I was quoted 5k per door.

[fastblackmerc]

How about some of their other stuff... flame thrower kits, smoke screen kits, hidden license plates kit, flip-flop trunk kit..... Sorry for the thread-jack....

[LVMarauder]

I think it would only work for the rear doors.

I wasn't thinking about doing the fronts. I saw an old black 4 door with them , i couldn't stop staring at the car tell i realized it had suicide doors. How did they used to do them from the factory?

[fastblackmerc]

The suicide doors from the factory were designed that way from the start. They had the proper amount of bracing designed in. They do look cool tho..... I remember seeing an early to mid '60's Lincoln limo with the rear suicide doors.....

[Bowman9]

Monster Garage did the rear doors on a police car (crown vic I think) but the kit/modding looked like ***. It was not pretty when you opened the door.

[magindat]

So, Terry and I have done a few of these 'kits'. They suck. Even the ones made specifically for that vehicle require cutting and welding. You pretty much have to take off the fender and cut the interior structure out of the fender. You then have to reinforce the pillar and weld a receiver forward of the piller. You then have to reinforce the cut out structure from the back of the fender cuz 2 gas struts attach to the now weakend inner fender to hold the door open. Then you have to align and set the stops.
Problems:
The fender ends up warping.
The piller end up curving in the middle.
The door sags.
The stops round off and need CONSTANT adjustment.
The door stop post gets the crap beat out of it and gets loose cuz the door no longer loses straight.
Handle area gets full of dents and dings from having to 'lift and close' or close hard or whatever from the stops rounding off.
These things are a nightmare for a daily driver.
Reserve them for a trailer queen.

Edit: This rant was about Lambo door kits. That's what I get for not reading the thread title. You are still gonna have massive labor and future problems with suicide doors, cuz the car just wont live through flexing in a way it was not designed for.

[LVMarauder]

that sucks. thanks for the info.

[Warpath]

I wasn't thinking about doing the fronts. I saw an old black 4 door with them , i couldn't stop staring at the car tell i realized it had suicide doors. How did they used to do them from the factory?

The 60s Continental with the center opening doors dropped the windows a bit when the door opened. It prevented the corners of the windows from hitting each other when the door opened. My grandpa helped design the mechanism. It was apparently quite complicated. Nowadays, you could probably just do it electronically by having the power windows drop. The 05+ Mustangs drop the window a bit when opening. Ford puts the window up higher in the seal to reduce interior noise.