Interior Door Panel Repairs
 

I had the door panel off of my 1988 244DL to replace the lock solenoid and I saw that the panel had gotten some fairly serious damage from moisture over the years. The plastic sheet peice thing had somehow stopped hanging in position and had fallen down to the bottom of the door. This allowed the masonite behind the upholstery to start collecting water and ... well... you know what that result was. Amazingly, the panel looked to be in superb condition from the outside. I couldn't find a better panel in a salvage yard that I liked, so I started trying to figure how to repair the panel.

If you will notice, my user name here is "Wooden You Know It." This is a reference to my boatbuilding hobby. I belong to a community of guys that build wooden boats. But using modern day epoxies, we can have a boat that has all of the beauty, charm and grace of a fine mahogany runabout combined with the durability of a modern FRP production boat. When I saw my door panel, I instantly knew that my boatbuilding epoxy would work like a charm. In fact, it would be total overkill! But I knew that I would likely never have to worry about water intrusion in my door panels ever again. Here are some photos showing how I repaired my panel. I have more than enough material to do all 4 panels.

I want to caption each of these so I will put one photo with one post. I hope that this is an acceptable way of doing this. I'm really new at this forum.

This first photo is simply showing the front of the driver's side rear door from my little Blue Brick. You can see that, from this perspective, it looks to be in primo condition.

But turn the panel over and you will find the ugliness.

Here is a photo showing the stuff I used. I like WEST System because it has an extremely low amount of VOCs. (Volatile Organic Compounds) This means that it isn't going to gas anyone out with toxic eye burning vapors. This is not a claim that all epoxy manufacturers can make.

I'm showing some nytrile gloves here. If you want to try this and think you might have an alergic reaction to the epoxy, by all means get these gloves. In the end, I didn't use them because they are just too darn small for my fat hands. I don't have alergy probs with epoxy either so I was good to go.

I started by cutting some fiberglass cloth to fit along the lower half of the door panel. Ordinarily, if I were building a fine mahogany boat, I would be very concerned about how the underlying material looked. But in this case, WHO CARES? The panel still looks great from the front.

Once I get the panel in place, I will "wet" out the cloth with the epoxy. The cloth will sort of disappear into the epoxy and that's the way it is SUPPOSED to look.

One key to success with this stuff is to get a good thorough mix. I had a helper with a stop watch timing my stirring. I gave it a good solid two minutes periodically making sure that I used the stir stick to get the crease at the bottom of the mixing cup where the bottom meets the sides. If I don't get a good mix, the project could possibly have some areas that are awsome and other areas that refuse to kick off even after a very long time. It is NOT important how I know this!!

Once I feel good about the mix, I simply pour a little on at a time and work it into the fiberglass cloth with the bondo spreader. Again, I will know when I've got good saturation because the cloth will look like it's disappearing. If there is any one thing that I want to avoid is that I don't want to pour on so much that I can't work it into the cloth and the material has no where to go without making a gooey mess.

And here it is finished. I know that it does NOT look good. On a boat project, the wood underneath would either be something really gorgeous OR we would paint over the epoxy. This stuff can be painted over using regular automotive or marine paints and primers.

However, for this application, I'm not building a show car. It's my daily driver and all of this will be hidden.

It's also good to note that the epoxy looks the same wet as it does when it's dry. So, to determine if it's ready to go back in the car, you'll have to touch it to know. Epoxies do NOT like cold weather. So I used an ultra fast kicking catalyst. The temps were in the mid 60s outside when I started and I had MORE than enough working time. Usually, on a boat project, we're looking to get about 2 to 4 hours working time but here, I was pretty much good to go in about half an hour. That was more than enough time.

I suppose that I could have epoxied the entire door panel but all I was concerned with was replacing lost integrity with the water incursion. I am going to Dynamat the door anyway, so even the original plastic vapor barrier won't need to be replaced. It's for certain that the epoxy is totally impervious to water.

During the day after I applied the epoxy to my door panel, the temps in my garage started dropping as a cold front came through. As a result, I started in the 60s but the temps were in the mid 30s when I got home from the college. This is another reason why I used an ultra fast kicker. Ordinarily, on a boat, I would NEVER use this fast of a kicker because it's not good looking and it doesn't offer enough working time in warm weather. But in this case, I could not have asked for better results.

wow, nice work. I don't know if I'd ever put that much effort into my door panels, but I appreciate the DIY!!!

Thanks.