odd protrusion of the driver side door
 

Hello all,

I have an odd protrusion on the driver side door. It started about a month ago and has steadily got worse. The car is a 13 frs so well past warranty. Car has never been in an accident, nor can I find any evidence of a hit and run. The crease is stiff with no give to the sheet metal.

I took it to the dealer, they have no idea what it could be. They of course are happy to charge me to take it apart. Should I let them and hope they will cover it under warranty? (assuming its a manufacturers defect) Or should I just go to a body shop and pay out of pocket?

Anyone see anything like this before?


I live in Canada if this makes a difference.

Thanks all.

Hi Rust. Can you back the pics off a bit so we can tell what we are even looking at? They may make sense to you but I have no clue where it even is.

Sorry, site has me crop the pictures down. This is from a month ago. the line now runs about half the length of the door.

And wash the car, the other side have the same?

wow that looks pretty rough, certainly not normal. not sure how something like that could happen unless the bottom edge of the door was pressed up against something...

I did wash the car lol. The pictures from the car wash are too dark to see anything. Welcome to Alberta roads where everything gets dirty in 3kms.

Other side of the car is fine.

Not to my knowledge. The line is slowly increasing in size though; really baffled I am.

I feel your pain on the dirty car!

It is a lump not an indent right?

Did you have any problems with your window?

Yeah winter!

It is indeed a firm lump. Window operates without issue.

No weird noises when you close the door? Sure looks to have come from the inside somehow. Probably the most bizarre thing I have seen on this forum (and I have seen some weird shit). Probably going to have to pull the door panel to see what is going on in there.

So far it appears to be 100% cosmetic. The door and window operate fine, no changes in panel gap. Nothing amiss on the interior of the car. I will schedule it with Toyota tomorrow. Perhaps it is a super simple problem?

Thanks for your help guys.

No doubt when we hear what it is it will indeed be simple but damn I am baffled.

not sure what would be simple lol. i dont think a PDR would fix that satisfyingly especially considering it is bulging outwards...would have to get a new door otherwise.

Has your car been exposed to blast over pressure or vacuum? Betcha' you got water in there on something and it froze.

It almost looks like the panel is trying to bow inwards slightly and being stopped by some structure, but I can't really tell from the pictures.

Throwing some ideas out there. This is indeed weird.
Has the door had any excess weight applied to it? Maybe someone fell into it and weakened the skin enough to get it just starting to yield, so that air pressure when driving it causes it to get worse.

OR.... !!!

I think I've got it here, hear me out.

Anyone know how the door skin is kept on the frame? Is it spot welds in the middle, or is it suspended by the exterior structure? Because, if one broke or a few we're not good, the aluminum skin would be free to vibrate at speed. Aluminum has no fatigue limit, meaning that no matter how small the vibration, it will eventually yield. Yielding under load would cause expansion of the panel, thus deforming it. If there's some structural member behind that crease, it would yield around that member under aerodynamic load, and possibly pop back out when there is no load.

This can also happen if the skin were to be too thin, or defective in some other way regardless of the attachment points.

Yeah, I'd put my money on this being water freeze damage.

Anything plugging the drain holes in the bottom of the door?

What are you referring to?

This is more or less what I was thinking when I asked if there were any weird noises or window issues. It isn't aluminum though it is ordinary sheet metal. The only aluminum component is the hood.

I wondered about that but it is pretty high up and I would think ice would cause bulges not a nice straight line.

Not if was pushing something else.

Steel can still yield with cyclic loads though. The skins seem pretty thin.

I like this freezing idea.

OP, does one door feel heavier than the other? Like when you close and open it? Is the car stored outside?

Oh I agree. I didn't separate my statements very well. The aluminum was a side bar not joined to the rest of the statement.
Tried to find a pic of the door structure but can't. The little bit that can be seen does not appear to have any structure there.

True. The ice would partly melt at some point though and should make a hell of a racket when you close the door. Would also jamb the window mech. I am just not seeing it being ice that far up.

Anybody got manual page showing the internals of the door? Can't tell exactly from OP's pic, but some of the heavier structure of the door is in that area.

Window mechanism, maybe, but that would make an obvious noise. Still think water problems is the answer.

OP, if you knock on that bulge, along the bulge, does it have any give or flex at all? Unless you have some sort of alien baby growing in your door, something is or was pressing against the metal. Need to find out what it is!

OP, did you get blasted with a heavy load of snow or ice while driving? Snow plow while parked?

Can't rule ice out of course but it should be obvious if it was in there. There are no other stress indicators that can be seen just that one almost straight line.

Hmm, but ice could freeze first to the inside of the door skin and move inwards, thus pulling/pushing on the skin itself without having causing problems with the windows. I can see that exerting enough force to form a crease.

For clarification I'm talking about mist freezing to the metal.

The metal is thin but not that thin. Something put a great deal of force on that to make that nice tidy ridge. It would have had to push against something in the other direction with equal force. If we could find out if there was a brace there that the water could get between then that would certainly be a possibility. It would have to hold a lot of water though.

Goram it. Does anyone have the link to the Toyota manuals? It's in someones sig line.

It is in Ultra's. I have checked and there is nothing. Worth somebody else taking a second look.

Found em.

OK so I just went and used the age old stud finding method and tapped on my door until the noise changed. They is indeed something very solid and straight right there (go try it). I am going to go with Spud's first thought that the door panel or that support is somehow vibrating and pushing it out. If it was a one off and stay the way it originally started then I would guess it had been pushed in but since it keeps getting worse that means it is dynamic and not static.

Could also be the ice thesis but I can't tell if it would hold enough water there to create enough force to push it out like that. I still think ice would have created a much larger bulge.

There's a crash beam that runs front to rear inside the door at about that height (marked in red) and is only 1/8" or so away from the skin. (These are pics I took when I did sound deadening so the brown material you see is butyl tape wedged into that gap)

Maybe it's coming into contact with the skin somehow?

Hey all. Just got back from dinner. The car is parked in heated underground parking overnight before returning to the up to -30 degrees C weather during the day. It has been parked on the street the last few months in a place I would not normally be. It is entirely possible a snow plow drove by and nailed it. As to the weight of the doors, they are the same near as I can tell.

The bulge is firm with no give. Some thing would seem to be behind it.

I should note, when I first discovered the issue, I took it outside from +24 degrees to about 0 degrees C and it tightened the panel straight again. Then a few days later, the bulge was noticeable even in the cold.

I think someone or something pressed the door skin into the crash beam enough to crease it but the skin didn't dent and popped back out leaving the crease. If it's getting worse, the culprit keeps doing it. That's my conspiracy theory and I'm sticking to it.

lol, there are jerks in the world for sure.

Agreed, it's just the imprint of the crash beam from behind after something pressed on the door panel. Plain and simple panel damage. Before anyone asks, Not PDRable.

Subsonic

I'd hope Toyota would be interested in that.

The crash bar is completely firm, so even if water froze in there, it would rather push the skin outwards, and not the bar against the skin.


Given the regular temperature changes mentioned by the OP, and assuming that the material of the skin and the bar are different, i.e. have different expansion coeficcients (as well as the crash bar being part of a rigid structure), I can imagine that the door skin pulls itself against the crash bar during cold weather - this would also explain why the crease is getting worse.


As to why it is only present on one side: Subaru's factory tolerances are quite large, and actual values even differ from side to side on some parts.




Just a theory, but makes sense to me.




You can easily remove the door card and check what is going on inside the doors. I suggest to check both sides and look/measure for differences.


Just watch out for the wires and the mechanisms for the door handle and door lock when Lifting the door card up.