Door hinge: fitting a grease nipple

My doors are in need of some attention although not yet critical. I have already covered lock and door card issues but there is more to consider. The door beams are showing surface rust and much of the shoddy powder coat (or poorly applied paint) has come off; preparation here seems to have been lacking and for a top end car shouldn't this be galvanised? They need stripping, treating and repainting plus a generous application of waxoyl wouldn't go amiss! Similarly the glass frames are showing some rust and may need repair or replacement: new window channels would be great and I'd like to service the window motors and mechanism. Luckily I don't think anything is past salvageable yet and its certainly my intention to tackle this in the summer... after the car is back on the road. At the moment access is poor but I don't want it getting worse so I will tackle the hinges and any surrounding rust now.

The doors in my car are fairly stiff to open: the passenger door being the worst. This is fairly typical if they don't get much use but if left unattended the pins can seize solid and start turning with the door. This can elongate the holes leading to door droop... and droop is never a good thing!! My pins haven't seized and the doors don't drop. I want to keep them that way. One useful mod I've seen referenced is to fit a grease nipple and force fresh grease up inside the hinge tube and (hopefully) through the top and bottom bushes inside which the door pin swivels. This job is  also best done when the doors are off and the pins out, but I don't want to wait and making this mod is in my book an insufficient reason alone to take the doors off!

The three big problems here are to make sure the the new nipple wont foul the A pillar as the door closes; that the nipple is accessible for greasing when the door is open and that swarf is prevented as far as possible from entering the hinge tube as it wont get removed until the door is stripped.

Firstly, I tested grease gun access and then stuck a blob of blue-tack in the selected location making sure it was at least as tall as the projecting part of the nipple. I could then close the door a few times and check that the blue-tack wasn't squashed. Having found a suitable location I centre-punched it and drilled it with a 5.5mm  drill to penetrate into the pin chamber. The location turned out not to be that critical but I decided to make the hole 7cm down from the top of the hinge and adjacent to the weld seam as shown.

Centre punch 7cm from top of hinge in line with weld seam.

5mm hole drilled.

I cleaned up the hole and collected loose swarf with a magnetic pick up.


I tapped the hole M6 using a taper tap to start followed with a flush-ended plug tap to get through the metal without hitting the pin. However tapping wasn't straight forward because access was limited between the door and pillar. Since long shank taps are expensive I dont have one! I eventually managed to fix the problem by tapping the end of a chucked tap wrench to take a M6 bolt which I then screwed in and could then turn the tap using a socket on an extension rod in a ratchet handle.

Hand tap wrench- remove handle...

... tap end and insert M6 bolt

Assemble ratchet handle and extn rods and socket to turn tap.

Once tapped I could screw in an M6 nipple and pump in some grease.


The door action was markedly improved! The rust around this area is really only surface but to be sure I removed loose paint and treated the rust beneath with "Metalmorphosis" chemical rust coverter and left it to cure overnight. Excess removed with meths.







I then repeated the process on the driver's side- now that the tap handle was sorted it took barely 10 mins and again the door action was greatly improved.

Drivers door- door hinge drilled and tapped in same position...

... and new nipple inserted.

I also treated the rust for re-painting  later.

Rust treated and painted- improvement!