E46 door swap - any pointers for me?

Eagle

Nemo me impune lacessit
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Mar 1, 2008
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Hey all,

My E46 that my son drives was involved in an accident... while it was parked in front of my house. Long story short, the driver's door was damaged enough that the quote to repair it was nearly $2000. Rather than do that I decided to find a junkyard door to swap on in the same color.

My question is if there are any pointers or gotchas I should keep in mind as I work through swapping the doors out.

I'll probably swap all the guts out, even though the door I got came complete with all the solenoids and whatnot - I'll also be swapping the glass to retain the tint on the current glass which is 100% fine.

Will post a couple pics in a few.

BODY GUYS, ANY AND ALL SUGGESTIONS/HELP WELCOME! Particularly interested in any airbag gotchas.

Replacement door:

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Turbocharged400sbc

3800 & 4T80E > ALL
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Jun 16, 2007
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I'm going to guess they did not leave the pig tail sticking out of the door where it connects to the harness inside the car?
you will probably end up having to fish your harness inside if they did not. I can't remember what year it is but BMW and Mercedes started using window position sensors that have to be learned. it is predominantly on the cars without a window frame encasing the window. most of them will roll the window down at anyways and then roll it back up after the door is closed to allow the glass to seal against the roof weather stripping.
 

smug

Please go back to eating crayons
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Aug 4, 2007
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Dan Erickson
I have not worked on a BMW door in a while but check out the hinges and see if they separate on a pin. If I remember on those foreign cars you can lift the door straight up about in inch and the half the hinge will stay on the door and half on the car. It will make it a snap to align the new door. Plug the new door into the car harness and make sure everything works and only swap over what you need to; mirror, lock, glass, trim panel. No reason to waste time swapping every nut and bolt. Some times the wire harness is different and thats just a gamble.
 
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