Has anybody installed a Cavalier door on a Sunbird?

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bluesmokennoise

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I am looking at salvage doors for my '91 Sunbird and there are a ton of Chevy Cavalier types. I am wondering if anyone on this forum has mounted a
Cavalier door to a '91 vintage Sunbird convertible (or variant from '88 to '94) and, if so, how was its fit? Did hinges and lock line up OK?
 
According to the Hollander Interchange ( Car-Part.com) it's the same...( 91-94). Interior door panel may be the only difference plus if power or manual ...


Doug in P.R.😎
 
Thanks Doug and MELSG5. I've got the passenger's side ready for basecoat and clearcoat but the driver's side is awful and I was just
thinking how much easier it would be to take the old one off and put a good one on. I've checked freight costs from various locations
and, although I can buy a door for $100 to $200, the freight will add 100 to 150% to that, so I don't want to get stuck with a door that
doesn't fit. Armed with both of your information I am looking at the possibility of a Cavalier door if I can find one that has an interior similar to the Pontiac Sunbird's
but so far from the photos I have seen, the Cavalier interior is considerably different. As I mentioned months ago Doug, I am above the
Arctic Circle in Wisconsin and am running out of time for doing body work which is mostly necessary to be done outside. We can see snow
on Labor Day so I need to keep this project moving along. :cry:
But I have thoroughly enjoyed doing it and even removing, replacing and cleaning the power window motor and regulator was a terrific
learning experience for me. And much to my surprise, when I finished, it worked! :)
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Update: After patching, prepping and priming the passenger door I ran across a very good deal on both driver's side and passenger door in the
color of my Sunbird. So I bought 'em both. They're immaculate and best of all, without filler. Of course shipping is painful but worth it. Earlier in this thread I wondered about the weight of a Sunbird door. Here and elsewhere on the Internet 100 to 200 lbs was speculated. The salvage yard weighed both of my doors (with full guts...window, regulator, window motor etc) and each door comes to 90 lbs. I'm posting this just in case some time in the future anyone is wondering and instead of being led astray by people just guessing, maybe they'll find this posting and it will be of real help to them. I'm still filling and patching the quarter panels and fender panels but they're no where near as bad as my doors were...particularly underneath the molding and in vicinity of the molding studs. I'll hopefully have some pictures here within the month.
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Doors arrived and getting ready to hang 'em on the Sunbird. The salvage yard did a nice job of removing them and left fully intact their entire hinges. (My original hinges are rusty and pretty grundgy). The hinge on the hinge pillar has a bolt that is screwed in from the inside of the pillar and one bolt that is screwed in from the outside. If I could get these two bolts out I can put on a nice fully hinged door. Can anyone tell me how to remove the bolt that is holding the hinge from the INSIDE?
 

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Probably going to have to remove the door pins to access the outer bolts, inner bolts are accessable from the interior ....not so easy with door welded hinges......you will figure it out.... GM's great idea...☹️

Doug in P.R.😎
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Thanks Doug. I found these pages myself. Man, you really gotta dig for those pages in that manual. But I sure appreciate your looking it up for me. Today I dug into the kick panel, removed the glove box and can actually touch that pesky inside upper bolt. I think I can get a deep well socket on those inside bolts but you are right...I can't see how I can even get an open ended wrench on the outside bolt without removing the pin. Tomorrow's the day...
I've got the winch ready and am going to remove the first door. The worst part of it is that I just removed, cleaned and lubricated the window regulator very well and replaced both power window motors in both doors (I thought I was just going to patch-and-paint the original rusty ones but then I bought new doors). Now those doors will probably be salvage somewhere. Don't know how much I want to extend this project by re-installing the old window stuff. When I get the inside panels off the new doors I will be better able to determine if I want to do that. By the way...your closing comment, "GM's great idea" was echoed when I called the salvage yard from which I bought these doors and spoke to the parts puller. He didn't have a lot of high praise for GM's way of doing it either. You, him and I all share the same feeling.
 
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