Door hinges, Original door hinges… Painted? Options

[Ishley]

I have a 1972 1.7 that I’m restoring. One of the areas that I can’t find any information on is how the door hinges were originally finished. Mine have been sprayed over several times and when I repaint I want it to look right.

Were the hinges painted to the same color of the car? What about the bolts and pins. We’re they painted or zinc/cadmium plated. I ran my bolts through my ultrasonic cleaner and it appears they are black underneath the layers of paint.

Does anyone have an original picture of how it was finished from the factory?

[nathanxnathan]

@wonkipop Impressive research (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

So most years there was a break in production in July and startup of next year's production around mid August it seems. Sounds like there were some anomalies, especially in the 70–71 transition.

I think that makes some sense as things were a lot less standardized in many ways at that point. And why there may be some anomalies in door hinge paint during that time as well.

Thinking about door pins, it seems to me (my best analysis of the process) that doors would have been fit to the car before paint and adjusted for position. Then they were taken off at the pin for paint (door and car)— to better access the jambs (and possibly to install some of the internals like the stay mechanism at this point?). They would then be put back on with the pin. It really does seem the most logical explanation for why most pins are not painted and also seems like just a good way to have done it.