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Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide
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DumbGiant
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 25, 2021 5:34 pm    Post subject: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Introduction

Here's a guide (with pictures) on how to remove the panel from the sliding door on your Eurovan Camper! This will probably work with normal Eurovans too, but I've been wrong once or twice before. While you're here, I'll also walk through some simple quality of life improvements that can be made to your van once the panel is off.

For context, I just purchased a 2003 Eurovan Camper and on the cross-country drive home, I noticed that I couldn’t lock the sliding door. The remote “lock” button yielded no results. I could hear the actuator whirring away in the door, but nothing was locking. If I manually tried to lock the door via the keyhole, the handle would then become stuck. I initially thought it was going to be a lack of grease/lubrication issue in the locking mechanism that was causing this, but after running across THIS post, I decided to take the door panel off just to be safe.

What follows is the documentation of my journey to remove and reattach said door panel, with a little bit of fluff in the middle.

(Be advised: I have absolutely zero knowledge or experience working on cars, so what follows is a layman’s explanation meant for those who also have no experience. I’m sure there are better ways of doing things, and if that’s the case, please mention it in a reply! The more information provided here, the better)



What you’ll need:

All you’ll need for this is:

1) JB weld (I used JB kwik)

2) car trim kit (basically a set of plastic prybars in varying sizes)

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Optional:

1) White Lithium grease
2) Havelock wool
3) Office (scotch) tape
4) Some clean rags



Steps for removal:

(The door will need to be in a variety of different sliding positions throughout this guide. To start, let’s have the door completely closed)

While inside the van with the door completely closed, unscrew the manual locking post (the little knob you use to lock and unlock the door), as well as the two screws securing the door panel about midway up the door on both sides (see pictures below for placement)

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(If you have a Eurovan Camper, you’ll also need to unscrew the two window blind spools at this point as well)

Now open the door and slide it so there’s a 6-12 inch opening in the doorway. This is the position the door should be in while taking the panel off/putting it back on (see picture below for door position reference)

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Using one of your thinner plastic trim tools, create a gap between the door and the panel by wedging the tool in between and prying the gap open. I’ve had success starting from the upper left pillar (pictured below) but mileage may vary.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Keep prying until you hear a loud “click” and feel something release. If done correctly, this small area of the panel should now be separated from the door, and it should be much easier to stick your trim tool in the gap. Congratulations! That’s all there is to it.

Located around the perimeter of the door are 12 additional (13 in total) plastic studs that clip into holes in the metal frame of the door. These are what keep the door panel attached. Use your trim tool to work your way under the panel where these little plastic studs are located, and carefully pry each stud out, just like you did the first one. If some studs are missing or have fallen loose, don’t worry! Just skip them and move along (see image below for stud positioning, represented by the larger, filled-in red dots)

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Note: Some trim tools have a little fork in the center that you can use to get a secure grip around the stud, similar to how the claw of a hammer grips a nail. Once you create a gap between the panel and the door, you can shine a light inside to properly line up the tool. I personally found that prying the actual panel was enough to release it, but using the little claw method seems like the safer approach.

Once all of the studs are removed, the panel should be free to remove from the door! While inside the van and with the door still cracked 6-12 inches, carefully pick the panel up through the door frame, watching to avoid scraping anywhere.



Plastic Stud Reattachment

Now, let’s deal with those plastic studs that came loose. A cursory glance through that thread I linked in the introduction will show that people have had varying levels of success permanently reattaching these plastic studs to the interior of the door panel. It seems like the factory glue used to secure these loses its adhesion over time, but luckily it’s an easy fix, albeit a bit time consuming.

The below images illustrate the general concept for fixing these:

First, remove the plastic piece from the old glue (This should require no effort. If it won’t come off, then the factory glue is still good and you should probably leave that one alone)

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Next, scrape away SOME of the glue. The factory glue does not provide a good base on which to add new glue/epoxy. This is where others run into issues with the permanence of their solutions. That’s why we scrape away some of the old glue…but why not scrape all of it?

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


You’ll notice that the old factory glue leaves a perfect impression of the plastic piece, allowing you to easily line it back up. It’s vital that everything is lined up properly, so retaining some form of these templates is incredibly useful to us when reattaching the plastic pieces.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


To recap so far: we scrape the glue in order to give ourselves a nice surface to adhere things to, but leave some of the glue around the perimeter to guide where the plastic pieces will go.

Next, apply a generous amount of JB weld (or JB kwik) to the underside of each plastic piece. If using JB kwik, work fast and make small batches because it dries VERY quickly

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


THIS IS A PERMANENT SOLUTION AND CANNOT BE UNDONE WITHOUT DAMAGING THE PANEL. With that being said, ensure everything is lined up properly before adhering with JB weld. Below are images of how mine are attached. This worked for me, but I cannot guarantee the alignment is the exact same on your door/panel, so use your best judgement.

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Quality of life improvements:

Since it was kind of a pain to get here, we might as well do some simple quality of life maintenance inside the door while we have it open (skip to the next section if you’re only trying to see how to reattach the panel to the door)

Here are two things I did while I had the panel removed:

-cleaned and greased the locking mechanism
-added wool insulation inside the door

I’ll briefly walk through each one and talk about what it entailed

Locking mechanism

This part was pretty straightforward. I just took a clean rag and wiped out all of the previous grease/gunk that i could. The image below is after adding a few test spots of white lithium grease

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And this is after going all out with the white lithium grease.

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Did I overdo it? Maybe. I have no clue. Don’t do what I did here. Or maybe do? The choice is yours.



Wool Insulation

I purchased some havelock wool to stuff into some of the crevices in the door while I had the panel off. It supposedly helps with sound dampening and a few other things, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. The wool itself is relatively expensive though, so I just bought the “small” bag for $150 + $15 or so for shipping.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


I put small in quotes because this is what I got. This is a large box, absolutely stuffed to the brim with wool. Based on the amount I used for this project, I’d estimate close to an entire Eurovan Camper could be insulated with just a small bag of this stuff.

One thing to note: this stuff smells somewhat like a barn. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising considering that it’s literally just wool, but it still surprised me. Once behind paneling though, any smell is completely nonexistent, so it’s definitely no huge cause for concern.

After cutting out a few test pieces to get a feel for the stuff, I began to stuff pieces of the wool into any cavities the exposed door frame had to offer. You can close your door for the rest of this section. Pictured below is the only real good place to stuff insulation on the door. The rest of the spots require a bit more work (disregard the orange strings. They are from a failed test)

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Be sure to add wool all the way to the top inside the cavity. It goes quite a ways up inside of that lip, so fill everything. After that top cavity was filled, I began to stuff the bottom most section of the door.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


This required me to use a trim tool to stuff any wool I could into a little lip below, as there’s nowhere for the wool to get a good grip. (You can use something like strings or tape for this, but I wanted to minimize anything extra holding the wool in place)

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Finished top and bottom cavities completed (pictured below)

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I then took this opportunity to fill every hole and crevice I could fit my fingers into. There are many on the door, so be thorough.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Finally, fill out the middle section. This stuff compresses well, so don’t worry too much about the concave indents in the door panel. I broke my own rule about no extra measures of holding insulation in here, but there was really no place to wedge this without some string or tape. I ended up using basic scotch tape, and it worked perfectly. I only needed these two strategically placed pieces to hold everything in

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


All done! All that’s left to do is close everything back up.



Reattaching the door panel

Time to put the door back on! Open your sliding door if it isn’t already opened to that 6-12 inch position we had it at earlier. Once your JB weld has dried on all of the plastic pieces, carefully pick your door panel up (from inside the van), slide the far end through the door gap (circled below), and then align it with the door frame.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


This part can be a bit tricky, but I found it helpful if I lined up the manual locking post hole first, and then used that to rest the panel on while I positioned the rest. You’re just trying to line things up approximately here, nothing crazy.

Suggestion: you should probably screw in your manual locking post at this point. I forgot to do it the first time I put the panel back on, and ended up pulling the panel off 2 additional times trying to figure out why my lock was now jammed. Turns out the little piece that the post screws into was just slamming into the inside of the panel. Save yourself the headache and deal with the post now

Now you can start to press the plastic studs into place! With the door still open, stick your head out and look through the gap between the door and panel, near where we pried the first stud out on the pillar. Watch to ensure that the stud goes into the proper hole in the frame, and then press it firmly until clicks into place. Repeat this process for all 13 plastic studs, using the image below for reference on where to press.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


If you’re having trouble pressing the studs near the rear of the door, step outside and squeeze from the back like pictured below. Closing the door at this point isn’t advised, as any loose piece can scrape.

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Once all studs have been firmly clicked into place, it’s time to reattach your manual locking post by screwing it in (if you haven’t already) and screwing in the two screws that we pulled out in the very first step. Add those blind spools back on too if you’re in an EVC. And voila! You’ve done it.

In case you're wondering what happened to my locking door issue: it seems to have been the loose panel pressing against the locking rod, pinning it in a way where it couldn't function properly. If you're having locking issues, take that panel off and check it out! Simply fixing the panel and replacing the adhesive on those studs could very well solve your issue.

Thanks for reading this far, and I hope I'm able to provide someone with a resource they're searching for Smile
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jimbomitch
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 26, 2021 6:31 am    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Wow, Thanks for taking the time and effort to post this, nicely done!
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IdeaNerd
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 26, 2021 11:58 am    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

+1 on the kudos. Nice guide! Panels can be so annoying to remove, with lots of little "gotchas" that can get in the way. You've provided X-ray vision for the task. Applause
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raloaner
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2022 2:23 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

This was a life saver. The dealer popped the panel off with gorilla arms popping all the inserts off. They then said they could not fix it and I should just leave the panel off as parts were not available. I used your pictures and matched them all up forensically. Insulated as well with self adhesive floor and door insulation off amazon.
Booom-all fixed and significant noise reduction.
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Wyotdi
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2022 8:31 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Great write up. @raloaner mind sharing what insulation product you used?
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sgirard
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2022 9:16 am    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Great write-up! If you have the panel off definitely take a look at the plastic clip/bushing thing that holds the control arm in place. That’s a failure point and is easily replaced and cheaply available from a VW dealer, or was a couple of years ago. I don’t know if it needs to be preemptively replaced, but at least check for signs of wear.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=703809
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02Berry
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PostPosted: Tue May 31, 2022 2:36 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

We have damage to our door panel where the rear screw goes through: The rectangular plastic spacer is missing. Without getting into the weeds with original parts, does anyone happen to know the THICKNESS of the spacer? This is one part we can jury-rig.


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PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2022 4:38 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Thanks so much for the incredibly clear and detailed set of instructions. The door panel on our 2002 was jamming preventing both closing and opening of the door. Prior owners had put 2 extra sheet metal screws through the panels into the frame to try to fix it. When the panel came off there were only 3 functional clips.

Couple of notes...

>>Most definitely scrape out the insides of the puddle of factory glue before trying to glue the bases back on. The factory glue has a waxy feel and probably will not hold epoxy. Leave the outlines of the glue so you know exactly where to put the plastic base back. I used JB Weld 5-minute and it seems to hold.
>>The plastic bases are apparently NLA. I could not find them anywhere.
>>The clips are easily available on Amazon. Search part number 703-867-299. I got 25 for $12.99. I only needed one so....
>>On reassembly you need to feed the metal post for the lock button first. And it is not easy to do so. Screw the button on and then start popping the clips back in.

Our door works just fine now. Thanks for the help.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 3:29 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Over the years some of the black trim pieces that are glued onto the panel have come off and disappeared - does anyone have an idea about where they could be purchased - or a jury rig idea to replace?
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Gamma of 3
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 11:18 am    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Thanks for this thorough step by step process. I recently heard some odd rattling on the door area, and when got to campground noticed a loose door panel and locking mechanism wouldn’t work.
Popped off the panel, and all but one of the plastic plates fell to the ground.
I’m about to start the gluing process, but noticed some of them have different thicknesses, specifically the ones the are square, but with three angles on one side.
I’m wondering if you noticed this, and where the thicker ones go?
Thanks
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 1:01 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Here are the locations for re-gluing the sliding door clips. I used E6000 glue for reattaching mine. I think I replaced the rearmost center clip with a 1" x 2" x 5/16" piece of plywood and a second screw.

Cheers,
Robert

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 31, 2023 3:43 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Has anyone used a Riv-Nut solution and stopped wasting their time with this panel? I have been trying to get one of the storage door panels from Kirvans in Europe but they don't currently ship to the US.

https://www.kiravans.co.uk/products/kiravans-vw-t4-transporter-doorstore?variant=41930724901064
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2024 10:05 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

hickory89 wrote:
Has anyone used a Riv-Nut solution ...

I've put a lot of rivnuts in my EV but not to replace that panel. I like that idea and I've been wondering about ways to use that space better. I've seen some conversions that put a table top in that location even a drop down toilet, https://www.spacecamper.de/toilette.html.

But, you can also just modify the existing panel like here:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9236224#9236224
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 05, 2024 9:36 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Fun pics! Now that I've seen those, I have to do something. I can't find anyone that has the little mounts that have fallen off my panel. I see some people just using wood and screws. I think that if I figure out a way to get template made and then get all the holes drilled into the panel cleanly, then mounting with wide headed screws would look good. That's the thought anyway. Thanks for the pics!
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2024 11:41 am    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Stupid question - is it easier to push the clips into the mounts that are glued to the back of the door card and then into the holes in the metal?

Or to have all the clips already in the holes of the metal door and then push the door card onto them?

I see the mounts glued have “side slots” which makes me think you first unite the plastic parts before mounting the card to the door…
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2024 4:42 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Vndlfsn wrote:
Stupid question - is it easier to push the clips into the mounts that are glued to the back of the door card and then into the holes in the metal?

Or to have all the clips already in the holes of the metal door and then push the door card onto them?

I see the mounts glued have “side slots” which makes me think you first unite the plastic parts before mounting the card to the door…



I'm currently in the process of cleaning up my sliding door panel on a "new" Weekender - it had the familiar issue where the lock knob wouldn't slide up and down when the central locking mechanism would try to pull it down. So, I'm cleaning up all the old glue following the guides that have been posted here for a while.

Having looked at these clips (and the associated plastic pieces that come unglued and fall off of everyone's pane) a lot over the past few days, I'm fairly certain that the push clips that eventually push into the holes in the door's metal should be placed into their associated plastic "holders" in the card/panel first, and then, as you're installing the trim panel on to the door, you push the clip "pins" into their respected holes in the steel. I say this because given that the trim pieces on the door card (into which the clips slide) are not all facing the same way, it would ne nearly impossible to push in any one direction to "slide" the panel onto all 15 (or however many there are) clips pins at once. You'd have to slide them in at least 2 or 3 directions - it seems like it would be a fool's errand.

When I get ready to put my trim panel back in, I'll be putting alll the clips into their plastic holders on the trim panel first. Hopefully I get 15 good clicks this time and the lock knob goes up and down with no issues.
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Vndlfsn
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 19, 2024 10:41 am    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Referencing the picture above showing clips P, O, N and V…

These clips are asymmetrical in the sense that there is an opening on one side to slide the mount in.

Do these face in or out? The reason I ask is because going by the original location, mounting them facing in versus out will put the opening for the mount closer or farther relative to the edge.
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2024 4:38 pm    Post subject: Re: Sliding Door Interior Panel Removal Guide Reply with quote

Here's my trim panel (from a 2003 Weekender) all glued up and ready to re-install (tomorrow after the glue has cured).

Hope the photo will help with last poster asking questions about which direction pieces face. I kept mine in their original positions ...


Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


I own a 1997 EVC as well and this Weekender is new to us - appreciate that VW added the carpeting as soundproofing. I also added a layer of Dynamat to the door recesses.
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