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Outstanding! Now I have to get a couple and try them on my car.
You still haven't gotten the passenger side bolt loose?
Not yet. I still ache from the other day. When I go at it again it will be with a pipe wrench as you recommended. The passenger door is not a major priority at the moment because that door still has its bushing and opens and closes smoothly. I was going to do the passenger first simply because I thought that the drivers door really needed hinge pins and bushings first, but the door striker bushing made such a huge difference in the driver door, I am really questioning whether I really need to do hinge pins and bushings at the moment. It may well turn out that the door sag caused by the current condition of the hinge pins/bushings may well lead to premature failure of this new striker bushing and if that is the case then I will probably have to deal with it then. The body guy has quoted $400 to supply and install new door hinge pins and bushings. For that kind of money I can buy a whole pile of Dorman bolts or better yet buy an even bigger pile of striker bushing kits that are available. In a pinch I can also pick up a batch of copper or abs pipe to make my own striker bushings.
So with the door striker/door closing problem temporarily resolved, I think I will start to look into the problem with the power door locks not working and fixing the passenger side mirror.
Last edited by ByronF; May 21st, 2020 at 05:24 PM.
Yes, I will go on a limb and say you dont need new pins. I was dreading doing that as well until I stumbled onto the bushings and doors have functioned just fine now so if they do need replaced, I havent noticed it.
I bought a couple of the Dorman 38420 striker bolts with bushings, and they arrived today (Amazon Prime delivers on Sunday!). As suspected, they do NOT fit my car. The bolt thread size is different as Byron noted back in post #21. However, the plastic/rubber/whatever they are bushings DO fit, so I took those from the new bolts and put them on my existing bolts in place of the copper-pipe homemade bushings I had made a few days ago. These new bushings are a little thicker.
I have to say that the doors on both sides now close very nicely. I don't know if it's my imagination, but I like the sound and feel of the doors when they close. Each bolt was about $8 on Amazon with free shipping if you have Prime. I figure it's money well spent. And I have a couple of extra striker bolts that don't fit on any car I have. Can't beat that!
It seems like, over the last week or so, I've taken more photos of my car's door lock strikers than were taken of my wife at our wedding! What's REALLY interesting is that my car (born in 1978) and my marriage (1979) are about the same age!
Last edited by jaunty75; May 24th, 2020 at 11:37 AM.
I still have the metal ones as I never throw anything away. But I expect these will last a while, probably longer than I will. And I can always just buy another pair of the Dorman bolts, assuming they still make them, if I ever need to replace the bushings.
Well this whole door striker bolt/bushing thing has been an adventure for all of us.
Jaunty, glad to see that at least the bushings worked out for you. Funny how the bolt works on a 77 Toronado but not on your 78 Toronado. The only reason I can think of is that by my recollection GM started converting to metric fasteners in the mid-70's and for a while the vehicles were hybrids with a mix of metric and SAE fasteners. I have not found a single metric fastener on my car yet so I can only assume that it was built with the old stock of fasteners and your 78 has the newer generation stuff. Kind of like the MISAR system, I have the first generation and you have the new improved version.
I finally got the passenger door striker bolt off today with help from my neighbor and a huge pair of vise grips. Then decided that I liked the painted look of the originals so took the bushings from the Dorman bolts and put those on the originals and tightened it all back up. Both of my doors now have a very nice sound and feel when opening and closing. Even my neighbor commented on how much better it was than before. So I think I will forego hinge pins and bushings for a while.
Once again, work has been keeping me from my car, and even from posting here. I'm living vicariously through your projects!
I did have about 5 minutes yesterday to take a peek at the drivers door of my car - no bushing on the striker. When I bought the car, the driver's door sagged horribly. I had a bodyshop swap the pins and bushings for me. That made a huge difference, but the door still doesn't close nicely every single time. I'm looking forward to doing the bushing add to see if that is the final piece of the puzzle.
Jaunty, glad to see that at least the bushings worked out for you. Funny how the bolt works on a 77 Toronado but not on your 78 Toronado. The only reason I can think of is that by my recollection GM started converting to metric fasteners in the mid-70's and for a while the vehicles were hybrids with a mix of metric and SAE fasteners.
I think this is exactly it. I have found a mix of metric and SAE nuts and bolts on my car. Mostly SAE, but once in a while, like with the door striker bolt, I get caught by surprise.
I did have about 5 minutes yesterday to take a peek at the drivers door of my car - no bushing on the striker. When I bought the car, the driver's door sagged horribly. I had a bodyshop swap the pins and bushings for me. That made a huge difference, but the door still doesn't close nicely every single time. I'm looking forward to doing the bushing add to see if that is the final piece of the puzzle.
It will likely help, but there still a small part of me deep down inside that thinks that these cars never came with bushings on the striker bolt. We've seen a number of '77 and '78 Toros now, including the several that I found photos of and posted earlier. Not one of them has even one bushing. Yes, these might be parts that can wear out and fall off, but you would think that you'd see one once in a while on these cars as certainly some should have survived. But we've seen none. I think they do help, and I'm keeping mine on the car. But I still somewhat doubt that these cars came with them originally. I'll keep any eye out as I like to follow these cars when they come up for sale, and I'll keep looking at photos of the door jambs.
No doubt in my mind that the bushings will improve the feel significantly. The big mystery will always be did they (Toronado's) come with bushings originally or not. I tend to think they did for 2 reasons. First if you look at post #8 the second photo shows the passenger side striker bolt on my 77 which had a bushing albeit split and well worn. To the best of my knowledge this is all original. Secondly the sketch in the service manual does NOT show a bushing and it is the same sketch that was in my 72 Cadillac Eldorado service manual. But when I checked the 72 Cadillac parts listing it gave me a number for the striker bolt and when I did a google search I found a NOS GM striker bolt that clearly has a bushing. It is shown in one of the above posts. So it would appear that sometime in the 70's GM was using bushings but not showing it in any manual.
Back then the Big 3 car quality wasn't necessarily what it is now. It wouldn't surprise me the learn from someone of that era that the initial design was to be without but a QC check of a finished vehicle indicated something needed to be done so they added a bushing but did not bother with updating service manuals.
Regardless of all that, the one thing I think we all agree on is once you put the bushings on you will notice a big improvement in the sound and feel.
At one time I found a listing for a pack of bushings only for GM but can't find it anymore. If you do a search you will find packs of bushings for Ford and Mopar. They have 4 or 5 bushings per pack of various sizes. Something tells me one of these will work with some slight trimming (the Ford one). You may want to check them out as they are considerably cheaper than the complete Dorman bolt.
May 21st, 2020, 05:20 PM
