Ya know, it's amazing what you can find when searching the Internet for information on Z's. This tidbit comes from our own Paul Richer from a 1993 post to the Z-Car list.

The door Hinges on the drivers side of my '71 240Z were getting worn out pretty bad. The end of the door, when opened, could be wiggled up and down by more than an inch and when closing the door, it made an unpleasantclunk as it tried to climb the striker plate in search of its latched position. I decided it was time to repair or replace these hinges, so I pulled the door off, removed the hinges, drove the hinge pins out and inspected the parts. I discovered that the pins themselves were badly worn (had about .050 inch worn off the contact area) and the bushings were only slightly worn. I called the local Datsun dealer hoping I could buy just the pins and bushings, but no luck. They only sold the hinges as assemblies and they wanted about $110 for one doors worth. At this point I figured that if I could just find a suitable replacement for the pin, I could reassemble my hinges and they should work fine. I measured the Datsun pins and they were 5/16 inch dia and 2 inches long. I headed into town to our local bolt distributor (Hi-Strength Bolt CO) and sure enough, they had 5/16 x 2 steel dowels (hardened and ground) for about $.50 each. They only problem remaining was how to captivate the new pin. The original pin had a straight knurl on one end to create an interference fit. Since my new pins were already hardened, there wasn't much I could do to them. So, I drilled and tapped one of the hinge halves for a 6-32 set screw that would seat against the pin. I also ground a small flat on the pin for the set screw to seat against. I put everything back together, and the door feels a _lot_ better. Not bad for about $2.00 worth of material.