The door pantry is to me one of the iconic and irreplaceable parts of my Sportsmobile. Lately the hinges have been loose, and I thought it was a mere matter of tightening- the real problem was hidden behind the door panel.
Top pulled out and body hammer of choice.
Beat back in, did not take much- one moderate blown and some shaping (luckily to be covered).
This metal is really thin and flimsy. After fixing the lower pull out, a crack and a rip in the metal was revealed.
Much worse than I thought, even with the panel off.
Hardware of choice, really just some brackets I had around.
Test fitting upper, this is the smaller of the two bars.
Test fitting lower- Originally fit to the seam, but with the crack I drilled the other hole to back that section a bit.
Drilled and some of the backing hardware. The 1/4" 1" washers were exactly like the previous ones, which had tented and pulled out with the door. So the large center grade 8s are just to back the weaker larger washers (despite the brackets on the same side).
Upper in place. The idea is simply to provide as much backing as possible without getting fancy.
Lower in place. Not as much backing, but again I was just looking for maximum backing without too much difficulty or special brackets.
Back in place. Word to the wise, my upper and lower hinges were different- not sure if it's wear, or alignment, but each fit only in the correct hinge pocket in the pantry... a fact I discovered after putting it all together for the first time.
One nice side effect that jwintersteller told me about was that the latching problem of the side door top was fixed by the stiffening through bracing these pieces. John did his with a stronger L bracket, so I was very happy that my slipshod brackets also stiffened the door enough to overcome the closing issue.
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