Toyota Sera Doors

From ThorxWiki
Revision as of 15:24, 13 February 2008 by Nemo (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search
(thumbnail)
Two Seras in a row

The humble and uncommon Toyota Sera has these nifty nifty doors. So-called 'butterfly wing'. These are the doors which inspired the McLaren F1 - which in turn started the recent trend for supercars to have butterfly wings.

So the Sera is a trend setter, but otherwise, it's a pretty ordinary 2+2 coupe...

Anyway, a downside to the funky doors is they do not fail gracefully, and when the gas strut which pushes them open for you fails, you find out they are damn heavy.

This happened to me, so I set about to swap the strut for the one on my newly 'spare parts' (ie, it's a minor wreck) Sera.

Contents

Tools needed

  • Socket set - 12mm socket
  • philips head screwdriver
  • shifting spanner
  • two milk crates

Basic procedure

  1. prop door up on milk crates
  2. access then unbolt base of strut(easy). unbolt top of strut (little less easy)
  3. bolt new strut in at top (less easy again)
  4. bolt new strut at base (easy)
  5. celebrate



Gallery

(thumbnail)
Sera doors fit on stacked milk crates. Donor car behind
(thumbnail)
The operating theatre!
(thumbnail)
Tools required
(thumbnail)
Base of the strut with cover held on with single screw
(thumbnail)
Base unveiled showing two bolts
(thumbnail)
Base unbolted leaves it hanging
(thumbnail)
The nut at the top is fiddly to access
(thumbnail)
Donor on left, broken on right. Note diameter difference. I assume left is original toyota
(thumbnail)
Broken strut has original rubber sheath
(thumbnail)
Note different shaft sizes too
(thumbnail)
New strut in place, works perfect



Links

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
meta navigation
More thorx
Tools