How hard could it be to rebuild some door hinges, right? Well, the problem is the rollers. I have gone through car after car at the junkyards trying to find decent 4th gen door hinges that I can just throw a new pin and bushing kit on, but what I've found is that every one of them have damaged rollers. Now, if you know your 4th gen elks you know that reproduction/replacement parts are pretty much nonexistent, however, while browsing through the El Camino Store website I came across a set of 3rd gen rollers and noticed that they looked like they could work for 4th gens. Immediately I went and took some measurements of the rollers on my dad's '71 Chevelle and what do you know, they were pretty damn close. So on Monday I went ahead and ordered the roller kit(item# 08-1320) from the El Camino Store.
Fast forward to today...I received the rollers this morning, took them out of the package and compared them to an old 4th gen roller. Right away I can see the differences, but like I was hoping, they are close enough and just need a little tweaking to get them to work.
Here is a picture of the two rollers side by side.
![Image]()
You'll notice the actual roller part at the bottom is a bit taller...no problem though, that will still work. The part that needs tweaking is the top where it mounts to the hinge...see the difference there? That inset part of the shaft is about 1/8" shallow.
If you happen to own a metalworking lathe or something I suppose it would only take a few minutes to knock the 1/8" off there, but I don't so here's how I did it.
First I measured the shaft of the 4th gen roller then marked it onto the new roller's shaft. To make sure I had an even mark all the way around the shaft I used a pipe cutting tool and scribed it on there good. Then I simply put the roller in my vise and used a fine tooth file to file it down where my scribe mark was. You could also use a bench grinder but I tried it and decided I wanted to take my time and have better control over it with the file.
Here's a picture of the tools used.
![Image]()
And here is a picture comparing the rollers. The one on the right is before and the one on the left is after.
![Image]()
It took maybe an hour to an hour and a half to do them both like this but it is well worth it to have 2 new 4th gen rollers.
And I realize I just typed up a whole long tutorial on an extremely simple process, but you never know, hopefully it will come in handy for someone.
Here's a quick mock up of the passenger side hinge after.
![Image]()
Fast forward to today...I received the rollers this morning, took them out of the package and compared them to an old 4th gen roller. Right away I can see the differences, but like I was hoping, they are close enough and just need a little tweaking to get them to work.
Here is a picture of the two rollers side by side.
You'll notice the actual roller part at the bottom is a bit taller...no problem though, that will still work. The part that needs tweaking is the top where it mounts to the hinge...see the difference there? That inset part of the shaft is about 1/8" shallow.
If you happen to own a metalworking lathe or something I suppose it would only take a few minutes to knock the 1/8" off there, but I don't so here's how I did it.
First I measured the shaft of the 4th gen roller then marked it onto the new roller's shaft. To make sure I had an even mark all the way around the shaft I used a pipe cutting tool and scribed it on there good. Then I simply put the roller in my vise and used a fine tooth file to file it down where my scribe mark was. You could also use a bench grinder but I tried it and decided I wanted to take my time and have better control over it with the file.
Here's a picture of the tools used.
And here is a picture comparing the rollers. The one on the right is before and the one on the left is after.
It took maybe an hour to an hour and a half to do them both like this but it is well worth it to have 2 new 4th gen rollers.
And I realize I just typed up a whole long tutorial on an extremely simple process, but you never know, hopefully it will come in handy for someone.
Here's a quick mock up of the passenger side hinge after.
