VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 Interior Door Handle positions

I know some might think this is a crazy question but I think it's valid. I will be installing my doors and interior panels soon. Looking at a lot of pictures of 31's there seems to be some difference in the interior handle placement in relations to "clock" positioning. I decided to look at my Fisher body service manual and it shows the driver's side door handles to be at the 7:00 to 7:30 position and the passenger side handles to be at the 4:30 to 5:00 positions.

This would mean that the handles are pushed forward to open the doors and not pulled back like more modern cars are. I know that the lock mechanisms have a detente spring in them to keep them in the locked position. This would mean lifting them up to the 9:00 and 3:00 positions respectively. This location will put the rear door handles very close to the window regulator knob.

This is just my observations and was curious what others think. All my lock detentes are working correctly also. The passenger front, (door which locks from outside) is the only one without the detente so are the detentes only intended originally to be used only when locking the car up to secure it while no one is inside?

On my original 1932 Special Sedan barn survivor all of the door handles are in the same position....about 7:00.

Dog, that would mean the driver's side were positioned slightly to the rear of straight down and the passenger side were positioned slightly to front of straight down. Is that correct if I'm understanding you correctly?
Thanks

Actually.....let me rephrase the above. On my car, the driver's side front door and the driver's side rear door are both at the 7:00 position (slightly to the rear of straight down). The passenger side front door and the passenger side rear door are in the same position as the driver's side doors....slightly to the rear of straight down.

We had quite a lengthy discussion about this in 46-48 and assested the position for all handles should be at about 7:00

Ok. Great. I would call it 5:00 on the pass, 7:00 on the drivers which would put them as mirror images. Thanks for confirming this.
Ted

Yep, that sounds pretty darn close!

I have an original sales booklet for '31 Chevrolets and 2 illustrations (not photographs), one showing interior rear driver's side door shows door handle pointing downwards at about 5 o'clock (forward of vertical), and other illustration shows passenger side door handle at 7, again pointing slightly forward of vertical. This location makes inadvertently locking the door less likely as handle is further from the rear passenger. Also, pulling handle to the straight down position will open door. If handle is pointing rearward of vertical, then one needs to pull up on handle to open door, and even a slight forward touch to handle will lock door. I'm not sure just what is best or original, but this is what I see in this brochure.

Unfortunately, the sales brochures usually consist of artist renderings so shouldn't be used as gospel. The position of the handles shown in the sales brochure is logical however. In doing research it is better to use original factory photos or original cars as reference pieces.

Either position of the door handles described in the above posts will work so positioning the handles is probably a matter of preference...whatever works good for you is fine since the only person you need to satisfy is yourself.

I am confident that different body plant people were used to install the door handles. That is within a single plant as well as in other plants. So any position close to the bottom of the handle arc would have been "factory".