How to fit LSD doors

[Madmarky]

How to fit LSD doors

 

I have written this guide to help you install LSD doors yourself. I have documented the process as we fitted them to my car. This guide has been written for the specific LSD door kit for the 350Z and so will be no use for the cheaper alternative kits. The LSD door kit can be purchased from http://www.lsddoors.com/data/int/downlo ... 085001.pdf

 

Please note I don’t want to be held responsible for anything that goes wrong or damage to your car. This guide is simply to help you fit the doors with the benefit of the experiences I had fitting mine. If in doubt get an expert to fit them for you, but I’m happy to provide any help or advice if you fancy taking on the job yourself.

 

To do this job yourself make sure you have a good long weekend clear, have at least extra person to help support the door. You don’t need any special skills but basic understanding of mechanics and electrics is a must.

 

You will require the following tools:

 

Full range of spanners and a socket set

Wire strippers/Stanley knife

A range of Philips screwdrivers

Hot air gun or gas soldering iron with direct heat attachment

A Drill

2mm drill bit

4mm drill bit

6.8mm drill bit (we use a 7mm which was fine)

11mm drill bit

M8 thread tapper

Small needle nose pliers or a set of O-ring pliers

Air Saw or Dremmel with metal cutting bit (this is to modify the wings)

Lolly pop stick to spread chassis glue

Threaded rivet tool if available (we didn’t have one and it worked out fine)

A small hammer may be required

Allen Keys

 

Firstly understand how to remove the wings. For some aftermarket kits you may need to remove the front bumper and beware that some side skirts will probably have fixing which get in the way of removal.

Let’s get started. If you wing mirrors are electric fold them in now as it will make the door easier to work on later. Wind down both windows. Disconnect the battery. Remove the trays that surround the battery and brake fluid compartments by removing all the plastic panel clips. This will provide access to the bolts holding the top of the wing to the car. Remove you wings and make sure you have the appropriate tools necessary to cut the inner lip off the wing as shown in the picture below.

 

 

I cannot comment on how difficult this job is as my wings are made of fibre glass and the dremmel went through them like butter. I’m guessing it’s not too tricky if you have the right tools, if not I’m sure your local body shop could do them for you for a very small fee.

 

Now if you’re following the guide included with your kit you will now be taking the door off and starting to fit the hinge. However my advice would be leave the door on the car and start extending the wiring loom as it takes a good few hours to do each side and if outside like I was its easy to stop should it rain and you don’t have to worry about supporting the door for this long process. Do not underestimate how long this process will take; it took us around 3 hours to do the driver’s side loom alone.

 

To do it my way, take the door card off the door. Please note the 2 doors have different ways of removing. The driver’s door has one bolt/screw in the little pocket which when removed you can take the tray out gaining access to 2 additional bolts/screws/ The passenger door requires you to prize of the silver door handle trim to get to 2 bolts/screws that are not on the driver’s door. Once all the bolts/screws are removed the door card should come off by giving the bottom of the card of swift tug to release the panel clips. Disconnect the electric cables from the window controls and the door card should then lift off the door.

 

Unscrew the speaker and disconnect the cable. You will the need to remove the small bolt holding the door ISO connector in place then disconnect the ISO connector by sliding up the grey locking tab (see pic below).

 

 

Once you have done this you should be able to pull the cable through the door and out the hole where the speaker is. You are now ready to start extending the loom. Cut the rubber shroud surrounding the wires off completely so you’re left with the wires exposed and the big rubber grommet which sat in the door. See the pic below.

 

 

Please note that I have aftermarket speaker wire running through my ISO so just ignore as yours probably won’t have. The big rubber grommet will need cutting down also as it’s got to go back in the door but the hinge will go over it so I advise neatly cutting it off and placing it to one side, I’ll explain how to modify it later. You should now have plenty of access to the wire loom and are ready to start extending. Get a chair and everything you need as you will be here for some time. You are supplied with a load of coloured wires and all the connectors you need to do this. Please note there are 3 different coloured cables and 2 different size connectors. The wiring loom also has 3 different size cables so take some time to work out what cables to extend with what colour cable and save the large connector for the largest size cables.

 

Extending the loom is fairly straight forward using the supplied connectors. As the main guide says it is best to do one wire at a time and stagger the connections so the new loom doesn’t end up too thick.

Cut one of the cables near the ISO connector end. Using wire stripper or a knife strip the 2 ends of the cable. You only need to strip a centimetre at the most. Now take one of the coloured extension cables corresponding to the thickness of the cable you extending and 2 connectors. Strip the two ends of the coloured cable the same as the loom cable. Now what I did was make a little hook like loop on the end of the joins so they locked together easier while applying the connector. Let’s look at the connector and how it works.

 

 

The above connector has a small ring of solder in the middle and 2 rings of glue type seal. Place this connector over the join so that the solder ring is over the two stripped ends of the cable and heat up the connector using a heat gun or gas soldering iron as shown below. As you heat up the connector it will shrink itself over the two ends of the cable. Apply even heat all the way along the cable to ensure an even shrinkage. Heat up the 2 coloured parts of the connector, you will see the coloured ring melt and go like a liquid indie the connector. Once you have these done, apply heat to the solder until that also melts. This should seal the cable and solder the two ends together, giving you a water tight seal. Repeat this process on all cables.

 

 

Once you have extended all the wires wrap the entire loom with the supplied tape. You need to then cut down the grommet I spoke about earlier. The below pic shows the grommet cut down and placed back into the door.

 

 

You are now ready to start fitting the hinges. The hinge will come in 1 piece in the kit but you will need to take it apart to fit it. Firstly unbolt the 4 bolts attaching the 2 parts of the hinge together. These are the bolts that screw into the blue part of the hinge (see pic below).

 

 

You will now need to remove the door from the car. Make sure you have somewhere to place the door once it’s removed somewhere that you can easily work on the door in a way as to which not damage the door. The door will simply unbolt from the car it’s pretty straight forward and obvious how to do this just remember to unbolt the check strap before the door bolts. Once the door is off the car take the hinges off the door and remove the check strap completely, you won’t be needing these anymore so you can dispose of them now if you wish. You now need to fit the door part of the hinge to the door. You will notice that there is an extra hole in the hinge at the top which you need to mark on the door and drill and tap. You will find a bolt in the kit that will go in this new hole. Refer to the standard guide for guidance on which bolt you need to use. Make sure the grommet is in place and bolt the hinge to the door. See pic below for reference.

 

 

Now you need to mount the other part of the hinge onto the car. Use the pic below for reference. Firstly take the aluminium oval plate. This plate covers the hole where the ISO connector goes. Remove the interior trim that is behind this hole and push the connector back through to the car. Place the plate over this hole and mark the places where the screws will go. Drill 2 small holes at these points and screw the plate on at the top only for now and leave it loose so it easily moves. Now bolt on the hinge to the car. Remove the O-ring that I have marked by the green area on the pic below. To make lining up the door easier I suggest removing the small wheel at the top of the hinge and loosening the blue plastic guider at the bottom of the hinge.

 

 

Now you need to move the door close to the car and get someone to support it. Slide the aluminium plate to one side and poke the door part of the ISO connector into the car. Slide the aluminium plate back into position and screw in the other screw in and tighten both screws. In the kit there is some chassis glue in a small tube, this is horrible stuff and very sticky so be careful with the usage and try not to get it everywhere as it’s hard to remove. You need to apply its all around the aluminium plate and where the cable pokes through to provide a nice waterproof seal. Using a lolly pop stick will make it easier to spread.

 

Once this is done you are ready to mount the door. Take a second to observe the pic below, take a note of how the wiring loom runs and make sure you have it in the right place before mounting the door. You will need at least one person to support the door in a vertical position and one person to bolt it on. Lift the door up so it’s at about 70 degrees and bolt the four bolts we removed from the blue section of the hinge earlier. Once this is bolted in firmly push the loose end of the gas strut onto the pin of the hinge we removed the o-ring from. This may need the door to be juggled around a little. Once it’s together put the o-ring back on. The door will now be fully supported in the vertical state so you can now relax.

 

 

Now comes the fiddly bit. Slide the door down and gently start to close it. You will notice the door guider will fit into the blue plastic guide at the bottom of the hinge. Be very careful when doing this as it may be very easy to scratch the paint if it’s not lined up correctly. Hopefully it will be quite close though. You now have few things to adjust to get the door to line up. Close the door fully and see how it lines up at the where the door handle is. You have a small amount of play on the hinge attached to the door which you may need to adjust but to do this requires you to take the door off again, hopefully you won’t need to do this but just beware if the next steps don’t get it to fit flush this may be the only option. With the door fully closed tighten the bolt on the back of the blue guider.

 

Gently open the door. Its best to put the door card and speaker back on the door now as the extra weight will affect the door mechanism. You can now adjust the bolt that goes into the blue guider; this will raise or lower the angle of the door so the door latch will line up. Adjust it till the door will close without catching. Be warned that as you close the door it will make a small noise as the latch touches, don’t take this noise as the latch catching. Other adjustments you can make is the bolt that hold the blue part of the bracket also have a little bit of play just in case it’s still not lining up. Just keep playing with this until you are happy with the alignment of the door. Once you are happy you need to bolt the little wheel back on. You must make sure that this wheel touched the hinge at all times through the opening of the door. This wheel will stop and play that the door has and guide it on its journey out and up. With the wheel attached lift the door into its fully vertical state and tighten the bolt show in green below using an Allen key. This bolt will hold the door hinge tight to the wheel when the door is vertical.

 

 

In the kit there are a range of spacers which adjust this wheel and also a couple of spacers which can go behind the blue part of the hinge. This whole process is quite fiddly and requires some patience, hang in there though and you will get it perfect. In our experience the driver’s door required lots of fiddling but the passenger door was really easy. With any luck both will be easy for you following this guide.

 

Connect the ISO connector in the car; I secured mine with a cable to just in case. You can now put the trim all back together now if you wish.

 

Now we need to install the last bracket to support the hinge. Bolt the 90 degree bracket onto the top of the hinge and mark where the hole needs to be drill into the side of the car. Have a look at the pic below for how it goes. Drill a pilot at the marked location and work your way up to an 11mm hole. Make sure you don’t drill too much as you don’t want the hole to be too big. You can now push the threaded rivet in to the hole; it should be a tight fit and may need some gentle persuasion with a hammer. Now if you have a threaded rivet tool use it now to compress the rivet in the hole. You can now bolt the bracket back onto the hinge. If you didn’t have a tool hopefully when tightening the bolt in the rivet will make it compress to secure tightly. You may need to apply some pressure in order to stop the rivet spinning around in the hole. All going well it should be nice and tight and your hinge is now fully supported.

 

 

You can now fix the wiring loom in place using a couple of cable ties. Refer to the pic I showed you above and secure cable at the points marked with the letter B. You can now make sure the wing fits over the hinge properly and put wing back on if it’s fine.

 

This is the end of my guide, hope you found it useful, any questions feel free to ask me. Enjoy your doors!

 

[P15UL T]

nice one matey

[BulletMagnet]

Nice writeup for anyone who wants to get hands on with a LSD kit.

Nice recycling of the photo btw, at least it's found a use.

 

The main thing that I wanna know tho is this:

Lolly pop stick to spread chassis glue

Does it have to be a specific flavour?

 

[Madmarky]

Nice writeup for anyone who wants to get hands on with a LSD kit.

Nice recycling of the photo btw, at least it's found a use.

 

I dont have any of my own pics and cant take any at the mo for obvious reason lol

 

The main thing that I wanna know tho is this:

Lolly pop stick to spread chassis glue

Does it have to be a specific flavour?

 

 

Any flavour you like, solero would be my choice tho or a nice white chocolate magnum

[H5]

Thanks for this bud

[M350ZB]

Great write up and member you mentioning this at the bluewater meet,

[M13KYF]

great write up

[Madmarky]

Thanks guys, was a great DIY job, very rewarding