Henry J (inside) door spring Question

[54HJ Cdn]

Hi All,
After putting up with the passenger door handle not returning to its 'latch' position, I assumed that I was missing a spring so, when I had the door panel off to lube the window hardware, I took a closer look.
Sure enough, there is a small spring mounted on a post that I assume will return the handle correctly, when the door is opened from the inside.
 
My problem: The spring broke due to rust and I have no idea what it's supposed to look like to find a replacement. It has one 1" long leg left, looks to be about 16 Gauge steel, has about 2 turns in it and that's where it broke off, in the middle of the turn. I'm not even sure how it mounts on the post when it's complete, but trial and error will fix that, I'm sure.
Does anyone know of a part# or replacement part # that I can use to search out a correct replacement part?
Any help would be greatly appreciated, especially by my wife who is my regular passenger.

Thanks!

[pnw_oldmags]

If you have a 54 HJ could you describe the hood ornament on your car -  please??

[mbflemingkf]

Have you looked in the HJ Parts List for the part number?

[Fid]

The Henry J parts book shows a breakdown of the inside door workings but the pictures are not good at all. The only  "spring" it shows looks like a shallow "V" shaped piece of metal and it is listed as "Spring, remote control handle escutcheon" indicating that it's there to keep tension on the handle to hold in place as a opposed to being a return spring. I've never seen a return spring in any of my Henry J doors but that doesn't mean such thing did not exist.  The shop manual lists several pictures of the inside of the door but no handle return spring is visible in any of them.
I thought the latch itself pushed the handle back into place.  The latch may have that spring in it but the assembly is not broken down in the parts book or shop manual. Maybe it's time to take the other door apart and see what it has.

[Fid]

Hey Vic, look what I found!  Whenever I do anything on my cars, I always take photos and a couple of years ago, I had the door on Edgar Kaiser's J apart to oil it. I took pictures and look at this:

Is that what you need?  If so, looks like it might be an Ace Hardware part.
I only looked in the 1951 section of my parts book, this maybe something that was added to the '52 - '54 models. I looked in that section and found no additional springs listed but who knows?

[54HJ Cdn]

Thanks for all of the interest and willingness to help.
To answer: HJ parts list?
Didn't know there was one but doesn't sound helpful for this question anyway.

Fid, thanks for the pic for reference. That looks like it's the driver's door, correct?
I don't recall that spring either but my build was 10 years ago and the drilling shown might be a home made solution, at least it looks like that to me. I don't have any problem with that approach either.

I'll be taking mine apart next to have a closer look and I'll take some pics of both doors and try to post them here. I'll shoot the hood ornament too for PNW; it's no longer on the car.
I have no idea how that's done so any hints & tips would be great.

Unlike the pic shown, my spring was post/stud mounted inside the passenger door very close to the outside door handle button in the top right hand corner of the door.
Very easy to miss, which I did during dis assembly, and consequently I have no pics of it.
It might have looked V shaped, in a picture, since it has about a 1" leg left with a couple of coils of maybe 3/8" diameter which slides onto the stud, which would act as the fulcrum between the spring legs.

I'll be back later.
Thanks again.

[Fid]

That is the driver's door and it's on the Henry J that was built for Edgar Kaiser. I agree, the holes look hand drilled but you never know. I found a photo of the inside door of my '52 Vagabond and it does not have that spring or any other.  AZ Steele sent me a photo of his inner door (also on a 1952 Henry J Vagabond) and it does not have that spring either. Who knows on these almost 60 year old cars?

[pnw_oldmags]

FYI
Here is a pretty good list of the Shop Manuals and Parts List published for the Henry J
http://www.circlekf.com/henryj/ServiceManuals.html
Just in case you want to see a list.  Jim

[ben-tex]

I have the parts books for 51 and 52-54 HJ on CD. Details at my site kfnut.com

[54HJ Cdn]

Well, I effected my own repair, since I couldn't locate any new springs like the originals.

Lowell, my return locking bar doesn't have any holes drilled in it either, as shown in your pic, so that one looks like another home made repair job.

I did however take several shots, including some pretty good ones showing the original spring & mount.
And some pics of the hood ornament for PNW.

I was able to use the original lock dog & just riveted the other end of the spring to the door about an inch below one of the door panel mounting holes. After reassembly of the first door, I noticed some resistance due to the handles being pressured outward by the door panel but it still works OK.
So when I did the passenger door, I riveted the spring 1.5" below the panel mounting hole to overcome the resistance on the fully assembled handles and that worked great.
Very positive return action!

If anyone can help me with some direction on how to post pics here, I'll give it a shot.
I'd almost be willing to bet that all the HJ doors have springs like mine, but as Fid said...you never know!

Thanx again for all of your assistance.

[Fid]

In order to post photos on here, they must first be hosted on a website. Comcast providers customers with 10 gig of online storage space so that's what I use but if you upload them to some other side like Fotki or Shutterfly, you can then paste the URL in between the ""  icons (hover your cursor over it the icons when editing your post and you'll see which one inserts that.  Otherwise, e-mail the pics to me and I'll host them for you.

[54HJ Cdn]

Thanks very much for your generosity Fid, I'll take you up on that offer.

I'll send you a couple of emails with attached pics where I've provided pertinent comments, mostly so I can remember what I did.
Maybe others can benefit from them too.

It would take me a month of Sundays to even try to figure out how to host to a Website.

Of course, I just have to include a complementary pic of my car too.

Thanks again!

[54HJ Cdn]

To conclude:

This is a snapshot of the stock springs in question that serve to return the door handle to its 'Rest' position.
There is one spring for each door that mounts on an inside stud by the exterior door handle and it exerts pressure on the bar connected to the door handle mounting.

It looks to be a failure more due to metal fatigue or defect than to rust being the problem here.

Graciously hosted by Fid.

Thank you again Lowell!

[mbflemingkf]

These look to be part of the door latch assembly.  Take one of your good door latches and compare it to the broken one.  The same thing happened to my 54 Kaiser on the drivers side. 

[54HJ Cdn]

MB - I guess you could call it part of the latch assy.
My driver's door latched just fine, in spite of the broken spring. I can't say the same for the passenger side, although it was close to acceptable.
 
That may be due to the difference between the handle lock on the passenger side as opposed to the keyed lock on the driver's side.
My driver door does not lock just using the inside handle, unlike the passenger door which does.

The primary purpose of this spring assembly seems to be to return the handle to its neutral (closed) position when the handle is released, after opening the door from the inside, which probably affects the door latch mechanism as well.
As you can see in my pic, the springs for both doors snapped off in about the same place, so nothing to compare to there for a direct replacement.
Only got 2 doors to work with, so I ran out of comparables pretty quickly - heh....

As I said, I engineered my own fix, which works very well, makes use of the stock assembly and I'm sure it will outlast me.

Well, that was fun so.....On to the next little challenge.

Thanks for your help everyone!