Your friendly neighborhood Stooge here for another DIY. Today I will be showing you how I changed the door striker on my 348. My door never really closed flush and the reason is because the door striker was plain worn out. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Opening up the door gives you access to the striker. This pic is of the passenger side on my car, and you can see it has see plenty of door opening/closings. Image Unavailable, Please Login
It's pretty simple to remove the striker as it's only held in place by an allen screw. Using an allen socket, or key, remove the screw holding the striker to the body. As I loosened the screw the striker turned toward me showing how worn this one was. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The first picture is of the old driver and passenger side strikers, one of the allen screws, and the adjustment shims. Be sure to take note of how many shims are on what striker before you remove yours. The shims adjust how far out the strikers sit to ensure the door latch can properly grab in the middle of the striker shaft. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Here is a comparison between the new striker, I bought from Daniel-San, vs the old driver's side striker. As you can see my old one was plain worn OUT! It only had one too left, and there was no spring under it (or whatever is under the new one) either. It had looooong seen better days and clearly explains why my door wouldn't floe flush. Image Unavailable, Please Login
This allen screw is used to adjust the position of the striker mounting back. I only needed to loosen it slightly to get it to move. I didn't need to completely remove that screw. Image Unavailable, Please Login
And here is the new striker installed and adjusted to that the door closes nice and flush. When adjust the striker i needed to adjust it a few times. The first time I had it moved too far in, and had to really slam the door to get the latch mechanism to full close. Plus when I unlocked the door it unlatched a little bit hard. A few adjustments in and out until I had it just right. Where it closed fully and opened nicely. I also decided to have the teeth of the new striker facing out, towards the door latch, to see if it will help prevent it from wearing out as fast. We'll see if it does or doesn't. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Thanks for sharing Ernie! Very helpful info. I've been adjusting my strikers in the past, however I didn't remove the strikers from the car because I was afraid of loosing the back nut behind the body panel. I will do mine soon.
