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Another crack at rear 300M door panels

2K views 17 replies 5 participants last post by  CaptainMorgan 
#1 ·
So it begins.



I drilled out and dremeled off the plastic welds that hold the sections together. This first set won't be getting anything drastic done to it, just going to be modified to fit an Intrepid. If you look on the left of the picture you can see the intrepid piece cut to shape ready to be molded to the M panel. The vinyl on the M panel has already been peeling back more than far enough to give me unrestricted access to the plastic that I need to modify. That part is so much easier with the panels apart.

I also used a razor to slice the foam backing off the plastic so that the vinyl should be nice and smooth once it is reattached to the panel.

In the future once I get a set of dark slate panels I'll be doing a lot more modifications, but this is a good trial run and I really want to just get these in the car soon. Once my car is riding around with a full interior I'll be much happier turning my attention to other things.
 
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#3 ·
I've got the one panel test fitted to the point where I'm happy with it. I'll still reshape it a slight bit more to make sure it won't rub when the door closes, but I can go ahead and hot weld the whole thing together all the way across.

I've used my heat gun to bend and shape the plastic even more, and to me that is the key to this method. It makes things soooo much easier and allows you to work your way to a perfect fit. The only problem I have with that is I bent and warped it enough that I'm going to use body filler to get the surface shaped correctly. No biggie though because the surface doesn't need a great finish, the shape just needs to be right. A rough surface will actually work great for adhesive sticking to it for when I re wrap the vinyl.

I am going to do some more dremeling on the piece. The Intrepid piece comes out further from the door than the M piece so I'll dremel the back side of the vertical section so that it sits flush and then the top part doesn't fit right either because of the difference in shape between the two panels. It hits the door frame at an angle instead of sitting flush, and just needs a little dremel work.

I need to pick up body filler, contact cement, extra solding tips, some fiberglassing materials, and whatever glue I'll use to put the sections back together. I'm thinking epoxy would work just fine. I don't want anything too crazy strong because I want to be able to split the sections up again in the future if I wanted to, and there are like 20 plastic weld spots to hold the pieces together so it'll be plenty strong.

I'll get some pictures up late tonight/in the morning of the progress and some more detail on my methods.
 
#5 ·
Alright, I'm packing it in for the night and here is the update.

Here are the intrepid pieces cut off and ready to go.



Here is the one M panel with the cut line penciled on and the back of the vinyl taped up as a precaution. While dremeling I had to thin cardboard slid in there to give me a little barrier that I would know if I hit.


Here is how far I've gotten with bonding and shaping the pieces. The flat section of the Intrepid piece is deformed, but don't worry about that. Once I'm all bonded up a quick go over with the heat gun and a little shaping and that'll be all taken care of. The back is all filled in, not time to go back and fill out the middle half of from the front side. After that then its time to sand it up and get it nice and smooth.




Slowly but surely I'm getting there.
 
#6 ·
Alright here we go with some updates.

I finished bonding the plastic pieces together and did some rough sanding of the joint. I'm going to wait to finish off that until my body filler gets here, but I wanted it to at least be pretty smooth so I could lay the vinyl back down and let some creases rise back out. I also trimmed the edges to make it fit the door and then did a little bit of smoothing out of the curve.




Thats it for now on that door panel. I'm going to let it rest for a while and every day I use the heat gun to heat up the vinyl and stretch out the creases a bit.

Now when going to do the other panel, I was looking around my door panels and discovered that I do indeed have some dark slate rear door panels.

This is nice because now I won't have to redo this one. That first panel is Agate and will do for now, but it is also a trial run of my "full method" so I'm not upset about redoing one panel. I'm sure that one will find a good home with someone eventually.

For a comparison of the colors, here is the Agate armrest section on top of a dark slate panel.


There is something a little funky going on though with a few of the panels I have. In this picture the front door panel on the left is Agate, and the rear door panel on the right is dark slate. The Dark Slate looks lighter, and some of this is a product of not having cleaned it up a whole lot yet, but still thats odd. The front Agate panels don't look Agate at all, but the part sticker tells the truth.


Before I get back to showing work on the other panel I thought I'd show you my dremel lair. I made a little work cave under the basement stairs that I can close myself in. I did this first to keep my mess away from all my other parts and so that I can dremel at 4am when I'm awake and not bother the bitchy neighbor in the next condo.


Here is the other panel (dark slate) split and ready for work.


First I have to pull out the upholstery staples from the edge I'll be peeling back and take off the window piece at the top of the door panel. The M window piece and the Intrepid window piece are a little different, but the staple holes line up from both so you just swap the pieces and bend the staples back.

Now with that step finished.

Next it'll be time to start carefully cutting the vinyl away from the plastic. This time I'll be going further back so that I don't run into the crease problems I have with the first panel. I had to trim that M panel a lot more than I thought to get it to fit the Intrepid door, and in hindsight I can see that I should have peeled the vinyl back more to give myself more room to work.

Before I get back to that though I decided to take a break and play with the next step in modifying my door panels. First I cleaned up the panel nicely, then I went to work.

Here you can see the bottom section as it is from the factory.

Now here you can see the bottom section covered in black suede. Don't let the picture fool you, it is black. Suede always looks lighter than it is under a camera flash.

Here is the door panel reassembled (just sitting together, I didn't reattach anything) with the suede lower section.


The suede is just fitted on there, not attached at all. I used a plastic card (old hotel keycard) to push the fabric all the way into the crack. I'm going to leave it there to let a crease form in the crack that I'll use as a template to cut off of. It fits very easily right over the old carpet and I'm going to glue it on just like that instead of messing with trying to remove the old stuff. I really like how it looks and it makes me excited to get into more of my door panel project.
 
#8 ·
Because DI auto resizes I never bother anymore. This way if someone wants to see more detail they can click and zoom in on a spot, but once the thread loads everything looks right.

I might have to do a resize of them though if fiberglassforums doesn't autoresize.
 
#9 ·
Very nice progress Dan! I can use this as a guide..when I tackle my panel project.
You seem to have done a great job at peeling the vinyl, looks like the foam backing is still intact.
You were right about that suede ideal..It looks real sharp! I really have to consider doing mine, but maybe with some raised "DODGE" letters, or something else. Is that on a Slate or Agate panel?
 
#18 ·
The panel where I did the suede is the second panel that is dark slate. Looks pretty nice eh?

Having some embroidery done on the suede down there would be pretty easy and look awesome, and that might be something I tackle down the road. Right now I like the plain suede look and am ready to get this ball rolling.
 
#16 ·
The pictures are resized now anyways, enjoy.
Now back on topic, what do you guys think?
Very nice progress Dan! I can use this as a guide..when I tackle my panel project.
You seem to have done a great job at peeling the vinyl, looks like the foam backing is still intact.
You were right about that suede ideal..It looks real sharp! I really have to consider doing mine, but maybe with some raised "DODGE" letters, or something else. Is that on a Slate or Agate panel?
:sneaky2:
 
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