Long background:
I hardly drive this car except for trips over so many miles or when I have to carry passengers with me; the loud noise from closing the door hadn't started until after I'd taken it somewhere for a transmission service (where, I'd noticed, they'd replaced the ripped and torn door insulation) about a month ago. So when paying more attention I saw that the notches in the door that should have allowed a pair of bolts on the car (just near the driver's head) to slide into nicely seemed to be 1/2"-1" off their mark, causing the loud banging each time the door physically shut. So since then I've tried to be careful in closing the door and trying to lift when inside and out in an attempt to make it more aligned when it closes.
(Not sure if the place I took it for the transmission accidently did something to it or not, and probably way too late to do anything about it if they did.)
Now the short story, and the big part of the what I really want to know:
So, I finally figure I'd have someone take a look at a body shop for a few minutes today to give me an estimate on realigning the door: Between $65-$600 dollars.
Best case scenario: They check the hinges, pins, realign, and everything is fine.
Worst case scenario: The guy showed me a hairline crack in the weld to the part of the hinge connected to the door (when pulled wide open, it looked to be just about 0.5mm at most). He said if that is starting to crack then aligning the door might just break the weld and I'd have to get a new door (or a used one for between $200-$300) plus labor (about $100-200), and if I needed the door painted to match the car and the locks switched out, there'd probably be more to it than that. (To be quite honest he was the first and only place I went to and I stopped thinking straight when the guy was talking to me because it was the afternoon and I hadn't eaten all day and when I heard "REPLACE THE DOOR", I seemed to just space out.)
I said I'd bring it back Monday to get looked at better, but the one thing that bothered me is that I kept waiting for him to just say, "or we can reweld it, and save you from having to get another door." I didn't bring the subject up, but it's been egging at my thoughts since. I suppose my big question is: Is there something less than adequate with rewelding that section of the hinge back onto the door? I would have almost figured if it was only slightly cracked now that a touch up with a torch could nearly make it as good as new. It's the lower hinge, and IIRC the upper hinge appears to be just fine.
I might end up going around to a few more places and seeing what the general concensus is and see about taking it in either there or elsewhere later on (just use the passenger door for the next few months for as little as I drive it around), but I just keep thinking that replacing the door seems a little extreme overkill, as does the uncertainty of needed a new door or not. Can I do better, or will pretty much any body shop tell me a new door is the only solution to a bad hinge?