"Thomas B" <tjb229@xxxx> wrote: > I am a little embarrassed to ask this: How does the torsion bar > work in the door of the Delorean anyway? To put it very, very simple, a torsion bar is a spring that winds and unwinds along its' own axis. You can best compare it with a very tightly wound up rubber band: take a rubber band and two pencils (or something similar), now hold both pencils slichtly apart and put the rubber band over both pencils. Turn the pencils oposite to each other, along the axis of the rubberband so you het an "H"-shape, where the rubberband is the bar. As you twist along you'll notice the twisting getting more and more difficult because of the torsion on the rubberband. Now lay bot pencils flat and hold one down, the other one wil flip up and try to unwind the rubber band. If you imagine the held pencil being the rear edge of the door/roof-opening above the rear window and the one trying to flip up as the roof-part of your door you'll se how this works. When the Bar "untwists" the force it delivers gets less graduately, that's what the strut is for: as the Torsion-force gets less, the strut gets leverage on the door ands helps the door up the last part of its' upward motion. That's also why you get "drooping" doors when the struts wear out; there's no power in them to help the doors up to its' full opening. Another thing that this can explain is why there's so much danger in adjusting the Torsionbars: if you totally let go of the pencil that represents the door it starts flopping around. You would'nt flop around, but you can probably imagine what could happen if it were you on a breakerbar on the other end. Remember that the doors weigh about 85kg (160LBS(?)) if I'm correct, imagine the force needed to get that up on such small leverage: the torsionbar-force is applied only inches from the hinge-axis and the doors are allmost 3 feet long measured from hinge to door-sill/bottom!!! I've never tried adjusting the T-Bars and I'll never try without an experienced person helping me!!! Quite a long post for something so simple ;-) JAN van de Wouw Thinking Different... Using a Mac... Living the Dream... Driving a DeLorean... #05141 "Dagger" since Sept. 2000 check out the Delorean-Files at: http://www.deloreanfiles.nl/ ------------------------------