" WHOA. IT HAS A GUNNER SEAT?"

The first major hurdle was the reverse (suicide) door. This is way more complex than any of us thought. Taking a factory door and making it open from the opposite side and swing back to 180 degrees. Normal doors swing 45 degrees at most. Moving the hinge point to the opposite side of a door to a location not designed to handle the weight not to mention door frame with no where to attach it. 

After measuring, staring at it, remeasuring, staring at it, and measuring again, we started cutting into the door frame to see what was behind the metal. Surprisingly we found lots of great steel inside the door frame for attachment points. After coming up with a plan for fabricating brackets to mount inside the door frame for the hinge to mount to we set to work. We scrapped the idea of fabricating a hinge system from scratch and opted for a third door hinge set to a 2010 Chevy 1500. This was a solution recommended by friends on Facebook. After purchasing a used hinge on eBay we set to work. My fabricator built a 2 piece mounting system for the hinges to mount inside the fender. Luckily we had several places with steel to weld the 2 part bracket to. Once the hinges were attached we moved on to the door and the "pocket".

Interestingly enough you need a lot of room for hinges in a door, I mean a lot! Especially for a hinge designed to swing 180 degrees. So my fabricator came up with a pocket design to move the hinges deeper inside the door to accommodate the additional depth of the hinges and push the pivot point of the hinges closer to the door edge. After attaching the "pocket" to the door we found that the metal on the end of the door was very thin. It needed more inner support to keep the pocket from flexing excessively in the door. The fabricator came up with a u shaped internal support to renforce the door above the pocket. Between this and welding the pocket completely to the door the door flex was virtully eliminated.

I cannot tell you how many times I removed the door from the pocket or the hinges from the door frame. Each time after shimming and making adjustments to raise the door or lower the door or push the door in or out in the frame, the door would still be far from close to hanging and or swing correctly. Finally I started making very small changes to specific attachment points and we started making progress. After 5 weekends of work we finally had the door swinging properly and hanging straight.

I spent many hours researching the gunner seat both the movie cars and the amazing version built by a Ghostbusters Germany member. It's hard to find source material for the actual gunner's seat on the movie cars. There are a few photos but most are from the front or the side. The most iconic parts are the "cage" around the modified pack and the "arm" seemingly used to activate and control the seat deployment and storage. (I will get to the arm later.) . The cage scaled out to be from 1/2" perforated steel sheet and 3/4" angle steel. Not having any welding equipment or requisite skill set, I opted for aluminum, it will weigh less too, and is much more forgiving. I decided to rivet the cage together and was able to complete the cage build in a day.

The rails are mounted as well as the seat! Everything is functional and you can sit in the seat. It still needs some tweaking as I feel its a little too high and the center of gravity is a bit back. One more weekend hopefully. Then to weather the pack and seat as well as add greebleys to complete the look. 

The  gunner seat arm in the movies is used to open the suicide door and  activate the suicide door and swing it out the open door as well as rotate the seat to face forwards or backwards. I used photos of the movie seat arm and scaled out the size.