Boot hinges

[Orlando St.R]

One of my boot/trunk hinges is making a rather unpleasant metal-on-metal scraping sound. So I peered in the boot/trunk and noticed that the roller on the left hand hinge (arrowed in the pic below) is not rotating. It will rotate with a stout pair of mole grips, so not totally seized.

Has anyone done any servicing, lubrication or restoration on the hinges? Other than squirting WD40 at the ends, I can't see how you would lubricate the rollers.

Any ideas or advice? Thanks in anticipation.

boot hinges 2 arrow.jpg (1.08 MiB) Viewed 1240 times

[cass3958]

Orlando I have not worked on the boot hinges so cannot help and I do not have a spare set to be able to experiment on. Sorry.

[Orlando St.R]

Thanks, Rob. Not to worry. It's the kind of thing that gets zero attention until it goes wrong.

[cass3958]

Also because of the way it fixes to the body of the car when a car is scrapped it generally goes with the body. Front bonnet hinges are two a penny but I do not recall seeing a set of boot hinges for sale on Ebay. Not that I was specifically looking!

I have had this conversation before regarding WD40 and the things people use it for.

Freeing off rusty nuts is one use as is lubricating nuts when putting them on but someone once told me that WD40 is a "do it all" not a "specific". So lubrication should be left to oils and there are better products out there if you want to free up rusty bolts. There are specific penetrating fluids which do the job better and quicker which you might be able to use on your hinge.

This is where Glyn comes on and explains it in more eloquent terms. Over to you Glyn!