Repairing interior door panels?

[madmax25]

Getting the '90 Westy ready for her end of summer adventures. There's a decent amount of minor water damage to the bottom of both panels from the PO putting speakers in the lower front doors and not sealing things up. AARGH...

I recall seeing a step by step for fixing the panels somewhere (something about getting it wet again and putting heavy books on it or something...i forget) but can't seem to find it with the search. Tried the Vanagon list archives too...
Anyone have any luck with straightening 'em out?

[klucz]

Just ask William Murderface Murderface Murderface.
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=198673&highlight=kilz

[Surfalia]

I had the same problem with my panels so I went out and bought door skin wood which is about the same thickness as the original panel material. I peeled the vinyl off the original panel and used the old door panel as the template then cut the wood to match. I used spray adhesive to attach the vinyl to the new wood door panel. It worked great. The wood alone looked so great I though hard not to just put a coa of clear varnish on it and call it good. I am sure it would look great as natural wood too.

[captainpartytime]

I shopped around and found some 1/8" birch plywood (any type of wood will work but this is going to be the cheapest and most common) that was almost the same thickness as the original door skin. Took out the original and used it as a template for cutting the new door skin. If you have a flush trim router bit it makes the job very easy. Cut the new skin roughly to size with a jigsaw and then run the flush trim bit around the new skin while the bearing rides along the old skin making a perfect copy. Good luck.
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-Kerry

1982 turbo diesel Westfalia

[madmax25]

Thanks all,
I'm thinking that'll be my plan of action. they sell 1/8 particle board stuff at the hardware store for like 2 bucks a sheet and I've already had experience with fabricating door panels out of it. I've got the super deluxe GL panels with the chrome strip and upholstery patch and all and wanted to keep that look...Surfalia, did you get any weird wrinkles or anything? I peeled a corner up and it looks like the ribs in the vinyl are kinda melted to the board to make the patterns. You didn't have any issues transferring the skin?

[DanJReed]

[Dogpilot]

I could not get the skin off mine cleanly, it ripped in a few places. You can also get the melimite coated masonite at Home Depot. It has the white surface on one side. I used that, so it would be water resistant on the side facing the door. I then got some good quality vinyl and some very thin foam. cut the foam and glued to the panel then put the vinyl over it.

The technique you initially mentioned sounded great when I originally read the thread. I wished I had seen it before I did the surgery on my panels. What I recall was he soaked the panels from the back side until they where saturated. Then he put some cardboard (some thing smooth, so it may not be cardboard) or such (no color to transfer ink) on the ground. Placed the panel on it. Put a thick piece of plywood over that and weighted it with cinder blocks to make it press the panel flat. Then let the whole thing set for a day or two until dry.

I tried to find the original post myself last night, no luck. I spent the day doing driver's training on my youngest and taking pics:

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Geology with a Syncro rocks!
86 Syncro Westy AKA "The Bughunter"
98 Disco I
08 Range Rover SC
08 VW Rabbit S
1951 O-1G

[Lanval]

Dogpilot,

Beautiful picture - framing, etc. is really nice. I like to see category busters like that! Not what one might expect from your resume, but, of course, the problem with expectations is that they are often shorthand for pigeonholing people according to our worst beliefs.


As for the door panel, there are a number of materials that you can buy which come in the 1/8" plywood sheet, and range in price from a few bucks to somewhat expensive. It pretty accurately mimics the qualities of the original panel, though doesn't have the finish. You can buy the OEM (or something very like - I haven't actually got my hands on it yet) cover material from GoWesty or Busdepot; maybe both.

Or if you get lucky like I did yesterday, you buy good condition panels from a junked bus. Still have to that damn sliding door Doesn't anybody treat that thing with respect?

[madmax25]

Thanks Dogpilot- I think trying to straighten the original panels is worth a shot before ripping the skin off. Not sure where that original method was, glad to hear it really existed and I'm not crazy...

[cheekoman]

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=226872&highlight=

[Crooked Designer]

Digging up this old ass thread to share the "reskinning" project I did this summer on my severely water damaged front door panels.

Took the panels off and you can see how warped, deteriorated and moldy they are. OP had removed the moisture barriers at some point, so I had to replace with new ones. I don't have a photo of those, but got some new high quality ones from Stacy Schneider. and installed those first. But clearly the damage was already done.

From there I skinned the vinyl off the panel. The fact that this composite wood board was disintegrating made it easier to have the glue separate with a little coaxing from a dull plastic scraper.

The hardest part was not destroying the "chrome" which is actually a foil sticker on a plastic strip (like the ones on the front windows if you have the old style window seals with the channel. The glue is only on the embossed parts of the design.

Got some super toxic but very sticky spray glue 3M hi-strength 90 and a new respirator and coated the ABS panel and the inside of the vinyl. Made sure to keep the vinyl flat so it didn't bend the chrome strip. I also did a lot of dry fitting to make sure I knew what approach I was going to take getting the vinyl on the ABS panel because I heard this particular spray adhesive is not very forgiving.

Anyway, got them together and it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be to get everything lined up. Used a roller and then put a piece of plywood over it and heavy things on the back and let it setup for 24 hours.

Next up was putting in new clips (used some of the old ones, but also got new OEM clips to supplement as some were broken and missing) At this point I also used a hot glue gun to secure the vinyl that wraps around to the back of the panel. This allowed me to work on a bit at a time and indoors. I also used hole saw bits to cut out for the manual window cranks and speaker hole. A silver paint marker came in handy for measuring location for the speaker. The ABS panels from GoWesty had everything else really well marked.

Skipping over a few things here as I had my son print me an ABS panel to cover the old speaker hole in the vinyl up by the vent wing window and then used SEM spray can to paint that panel (had already used it on the new larger speaker cover we made as well) and put everyting back on. This photo makes the clips look a lot more apparent than they look in real life, but now the door panels are straight and look great and I'm not breathing as much mold. Worth the time.

The first one took me most of a day and the second one I got done in about 2 hours. Overall very pleased.
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'85 Westy full camper, Subaru 2.5L, 5 speed SubiGears + 5speedbus shifter kit

[4Gears4Tires]

That looks great! What an improvement.

I wonder if sandwiching a thin 1/4" foam sheet would have smoothed out all the bumps/waves.
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'87 Syncro Ferric Oxyhydroxide Superleggera Edition
'85 Westy Sciuridae Domus Edition

[Crooked Designer]

[do.dah]

Regarding foam backing; My VERY limited experience is that there is a big difference between foam the manufacturer uses, and what we common folk can get.
While the results of foam backing door cards/headliners can look very nice, they ain't gonna last very long before deteriorating....

[Crooked Designer]

[R0Batt]

I just removed my door skins from the factory panels successfully.


I purchased replacement panels, but my door skins seem to have shrunk just a little bit??

Did you experience this? At first I thought that the replacement panels were the wrong size.

Any suggestions?
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85 Westy

Charlotte, NC

[Crooked Designer]

[zerotofifty]

Samba member 16CVS (Stacey) makes and sells some nice front door rain shields which will keep your new door cards nice and dry so they wont warp from water leaks around the windows.
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Sorry About That Chief.

Give Peace a Chance.

Words to live by.

[R0Batt]

[zerotofifty]