How do you seal your door hinges to the body?

[sly]

just posted for the lyric "I bless the rains..."

This one may be more better... Barry Manilow "I made it through the rain"

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Well it's not completely thru the rain yet! It's like Ford deliberately punched all sorts of extra holes in them hinges, just so it's easier for water to meander around the sealed surfaces and still find a way inside. No water outside the A-pillar this time, so I guess the bolts are no longer weeping. Bottom cavity of A-pillar is still plenty wet tho, but I can't tell how much of it is just leftovers from a few days ago (it never got hot enough for all the water in there to evaporate) and how much is new addition from today. Either way the puddle that was forming there before is now mostly gone, so I'm guessing it's mostly old water ingress. However looking at the back side of the A-pillar steel where the hooks that hold the hinge nut-plates are punched out I can clearly see moisture. Lower hinge nut-plate is easy access, upper one is for all intents and purposes impossible to get to from the inside.

So it seems that to make this bullshit go away completely I'll be doing the add-on rubber gaskets. Which will suck majorly, as there is very little space to manipulate the bolts with fenders still attached...

[DerekTheGreat]

You are missing nothing. Imagine CSNY if they had 80s synthesizers.

Hahaha, that's a pretty good analogy.

I support your grease idea on the hinge and Teflon paste on the bolts. Water hates grease.

[nathand]

I like using Seam Sealer. It stays flexible and won't damage the paint.

[knucklehead0202]

Africa is an awesome song! As to the topic, flex seal? Lol. I know it's kinda gay but I keep seeing the commercials and I just have to find a use for that shit. Maybe i'll take some to work and fix plumbing with it. Kind of a running joke at the shop.

[kishy]

Thinking outside the "box", here...

Your water entry might not be via the hinge, but rather via that fail of a design that seems to be the cowl area. I haven't studied it closely but it seems like a few pieces of body sheetmetal bridge together in that area and where they are layered, water could find its way into the hinge area, but inside the cabin instead of outside.

Something to look at.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Kishy, yes you are correct on the cowl being a possible leak source if the vehicle in question was a Panther car, but it is not - it is a pickup truck, still made by Ford and of the same vintage as box panthers tho so hinges are of the same BS design. Cows on the other hand are much much better on the trucks, and this one it particular has RTV all along any and all seams and several layers of rubberized undercoating on top of that - the chance of that leaking ever a slim to none.

The hinges were indeed the water entry points, not so much the the bolts but rather the punch-outs that form the hooks on which the plate the bolts thread into rides on inside the A-pillars. I suppose the flat section of the hinge's cab-side bracket is supposed to lay tight enough against the A-pillar to close off these punch-outs, but even so that would never seal completely. Which I suppose is expected given the presence of drain holes at the bottom of the A-pillars, but still, like I mentioned before frozen water does not drain and just keeps promoting rust to form in an area that is a royal bitch to fix.

Regardless, several heavy coats of "X-O Rust" paint seem to have done the trick - this thing seeps into all nukes and crannies and when it dries off it becomes very much like flexible coating, so it effectively seals every little gap it finds its way into. That, combined with some RTV applied to some holes on the hingers themselves that make no sense whatsoever why they would be needed, has successfully stopped water from coming in even during heavy (and I mean torrential) rains. Heavy coat of Fluid-film tops off the works, it's sprayed all over inside the A-pillars and the leftovers was sprayed into the bottom of the doors as well - being that as many of you folks said water hates grease, having liberate amounts of this grease-like substance in the typical areas water likes to collect in should ensure that water does not stick around much but instead finds the nearest exit point (drain port) in a speedy manner.

And again the problem with applying anything like RTV or even grease around the hinges was that the space available was very limited and it's nigh impossible to get a good seam to ensure water stays off. The X-O Rust paint on a long skinny brush was easier to apply, the top and rear of the hinges is right there when the doors are open, and the front edge is reached thru the gap between the door and the fender again with the door open, several coats over several days' time allowed it to leak into places that are otherwise impossible to forcefully push sealant or grease into due to sheer lack of access towards them. Now that I think of it tho, spraying some Fluid-film on top of all that isn't a bad idea at all, I shall do so in the next few days and this should officially be the end of it.

Flex-seal is actually a pretty good product, it's similar to rubberized undercoating in how it lays on and dries out. The problem with it, however, is that it tends to stick to itself more than it likes to flow into small cavities, therefore it would be more of an external water-tight coating as opposed to that plus internal cavity plug like the X-O Rust paint turns into when it cures. For the hinges on rear doors tho, both on passenger cars and pickup trucks, I could see it working quite well, due to much easier access and control over where it's sprayed into and how much of it goes in there.