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QUICK TIP: adjust Defender doors
By Simon Ward-Hastelow
30th Mar 2007
There's nothing more satisfying than hearing a door shut properly with a positive thud, some vehicle manufacturers use it as a selling point. But after a while the doors on a Defender will begin to fight back. THe hinges wear, the latch moves and before long you find yourself standing back and slamming the door shut to get it to lock properly. A quick bit of fiddling with a screwdriver can put it right.
The latch itself is held in place with just two bolts which attach to a plate with captive nuts in the door pillar. The holes in the door pillar are larger than necessary to allow the latch to be adjusted a fair bit. This also means that the latch can move backwards into the vehicle which means you have to slam the door a little bit harder each time for the door to contact the latch.
All you need to do is loosen the bolts and pull it back towards the outside of the vehicle.
In the picture (left) you can see where the edge of the door has been rubbing on the latch, in this case a shim needs to be removed (see below)
You can further adjust the latch fore and aft with the use of spacer shims (see picture below-left with red pointer) to make sure the latch is truly centred on the locking mechanism in the door. Usually this is only necessary if you've had the doors off for some reason or fitted different doors.
BE AWARE! If you fully remove the bolts the captive-nut plate could drop down the hole inside the door pillar (see green pointer) and it is a fiddly job to get it back out again. You don't need to fully remove the latch to fit the shims they have locating slots cut into them so just loosening the latch allows you to slide a shim into place without removing the bolts.
If you need to adjust the the entire door, to straighten up the shut-lines for instance, firstly close the door then slightly loosen the bolts holding the exterior hinges on the door pillar (not the door itself) and raise or lower the door using the handle until the desired location is found then re-tighten the hinge bolts.
NOTE: if the bolts are rusty this is a lot easier said than done, spray them generously with penetrating fluid beforehand or consider replacing them altogether with stainless bolts.
Just a quick note regarding shut lines on a Land Rover Defender . . .
In the early 80's it was widely reported that Mitsubishi wanted to test the effectiveness of the door seals on the Shogun both to prevent water ingress during wading and to keep out the sand when entering the various desert races they had entered. All their measuring equipment proved inconclusive so they locked a cat into the vehicle and went away for a few hours. When they later returned the cat had suffocated, neatly proving that the air-tight security of the Sogun was satisfactory.
Not wanting to be outdone the men-in-brown-overalls at Solihull decided to try the same experiment with the (then) new 90 and 110. A scraggy moggy was obtained and locked into a Land Rover fresh of the line. The engineers firstly ensured that all doors and windows were firmly closed then went to lunch.
When they returned the cat had escaped!
So maybe those gaping shut-lines on your motor are a design feature?
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QUICK TIP: adjust Defender doors - 30th Mar 2007 - 1:42:24 AM
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