Well I was repacing the door hinge bushings in my 1977 Suburban C-10 and then got the bright idea to replace the door striker bolt too. Well I should have known better. Whatever the bolt screws into fell into the interior of the body support column between the driver and passenger door. I tried dropping a magnet on a string through the striker hole but to no avail. There is a plastic panel on the inside that might reveal an access hole, but to take the panel off I would need to remove two seatbelt anchor bolts that probably have hidden loose nuts backing them also. Am I missing something here or is this one jacked up design? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Bob
You can get to it that way. The other nuts for the seat belts are welded in. Remember the striker is adjustable, so play with it after you get the bushings in for the door to close well.
Thanks for your replies John Alt and AZGuy. Well I had to pull off two pieces of interior moulding and two seat belt anchors to get to the access holes and then had a fun time fishing out the 1/4 inch "D" shaped threaded backer plate out but I got the new striker bolt in. Took me more than an hour. The plate is heavy but luckily I had a STRONG magnet that I fixed to the end of a piece of fuel hose to fish it out.
Then it was time to do the other door. Maybe that striker bolt wasn't too bad after all. No such luck, it too had some major flat spots ground into it. Then it came to me. I had purchased some NdFeB magnets on Ebay a while back thinking someday they might be handy. They were recovered from hard drives by some lady from Denver CO and are shaped like hmmm stubby fat boomerangs about 3/4 inch wide, 1 and 3/4 inches long and about 1/8 inch thick. Thet are very strong! I loosened the old striker bolt with a pipe wrench and backed it out just enough to slip two magnets between the integral striker bolt washer and the two shim washers. This allowed me to carefully back the bolt completely out and screw the new one in. Theaded hole in backer plate did not shift one bit in the square hole.Then remove the magnets and adjust/tighten the striker bolt. Voila! All in less than five minutes. Hmm wonder if this is the way they do it at the dealer? I'm pretty sure standard ceramic magnets would not hold the heavy plate. Moral of the story... 1. Even a novice weekend mechanic gets lucky now and then. 2. If your wife moans about some of the stuff you buy that has no particular immediate purpose .... you will be vindicated, maybe not today or next week but someday you will.
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