Hello all. I'm pretty new here. I have a non running fc in my garage right now and I've been learning a lot here on this forum. This is a great community and I hope I can add something to it.

Amidst tearing my engine apart, I'm also going over the rest of my car, cleaning, fixing, generally tinkering. My door interiors looked quite dirty, beat up, and generally dated. I'm missing the speakers that go in the doors, and I'm not planning on putting speakers back in, so I wanted to cover over those holes in a pleasant way. I finally decided to recover the door cards (the fabric in fabrication), but the old pressed board cards were water damaged and cracked up quite a bit.

The solution was to make some from scratch. I've added a few pictures in case anybody wants some guidance on doing this themselves. All total, I probably spent $30 to do this and I am pretty happy with the results. On to the pictars.









I used coroplast (corrogated sign plastic) to make the card, a little spray adhesive to stick some quilt batting on the outside for padding, then spray adhesive to attach some microsuede fabric over that. In retrospect I didn't need to leave the batting overhanging the coroplast. My edges weren't nice and crisp, and I think the excess batting is to blame. I also had to reinforce the glued down fabric on the back with some tape. A little ghetto, but I'm not too worried about it.





Making the mounts for the blue clips and metal tabs was not too difficult. The blue clips just involved drilling a hole in the right place (transfered from old card), cutting a slit from the hole to the edge of the card, and carefully threading the blue clip up the slit into the hole (we all know the jokes that go here so I won't say them ). Patience is a virtue here as a tear in the coroplast around these will make for a crappy mount on the door. The metals tabs are easier. Just mark the coroplast using the old card as a guide, take a screwdriver that is the same width as the tab, and punch the scredriver through to make a slot for the tab to stick through. I tapped the screwdriver through with a hammer and put a wood block underneath so I didn't leave marks on my dining room table.

 

I used the old cards as the template and got everything just about right through tracing and eyeballing. Utility knife for cutting the coroplast, scissors for the fabric, drill for the door handle and window crank holes. In retrospect I would have made those two holes a little larger than my tracing, as I had to trim them each a little larger when I starting test fitting on the car door.












I sprayed the new fabric with a stain blocker that came with my couch to hopefully keep it looking nice for as long as possible. The fabric feels sturdy, so we'll see how it holds up. I'm pretty happy with the results and it definitely looks 100 times better than the old ones. Enjoy.

 

I like this...
I like it a lot

Its very nice thanks for the how to

 

Thanks. Let me know if you would like any clarification on how I did it. It was only around 6-7 hours of work (aside from letting glue dry).

 

I am in the midst of doing the same thing and I have to say me and my friends tought of a material to replace that crappy particle board looking crap, and nothing came to our minds, but now that I saw what you used coroplast (corrogated sign plastic) that is what I am going to use thanks for posting your results they were a big help and your door panels look great.

 

Glad it helped. My brother works at a sign shop, so I got a super cheap piece of scrap coroplast that had been sitting around his office for a while. It might be worth it to talk to local sign shops for spare pieces where you are. I couldn't find any pieces big enough at loews or home depot, so the sign shop was the only option I found.

Good luck on your doors. Feel free to post pics here when you get them done. I'd love to see them.

 

looks good, but I definitely would have some speakers mounted in those panels! good job tho.

 

Yeah, I thought about keeping speakers, but my car has no stereo at all right now, and when I put one in, I'm just doing 4 speakers, no extra amps, and a fairly standard cd player.

I used to have a minivan and I had put together a very nice system that was fun to listen to. This car is aimed more at lightweight.

Of course, it would be really easy to add speakers to these door panels. Just one more hole to cut.

 

looks good tho keep it up, and glad to have ya around

 

thanks for the welcome. And thanks especially for the dancing fat man.