My original door panels are in excellent original condition.. However, the cardboard has come apart at the cardboard/ backing board perforations. Also, some of the panel clip supports have pulled out. Is there a "heavy" board that I can glue to the original cardboard? Is there a way to support the clip areas? Thank you!
I had the same issue on the door panel of the X. Go to your local auto upholstery place and get a piece of door panel cardboard. I cut a strip 4 inches wide by the length of the panel and used contact cement to glue it to the back of my door panel.
As far as the holes for the clips, you can take the same cardboard and to repair the holes for the clips. Just make the cardboard thinner by peeling layers off it
I have a couple nice sets of orig. & have wondered if it's worth having an upholstery shop un-stitch & re-do them.
George, You basically have to do what Jason is talking about, as in cutting pieces of cardboard out and splicing everything back in. The problem is if you try to glue an entire panel on the back, it makes the door panel too thick and will give you problems when you close the door. I used to have a thin sheet of aluminum with glue on the back and fixed a few clip holes that way. I also once repaired a door panel where the entire bottom was falling apart. I built it up with pieces of cardboard, then used some fiberglass resin/matting to “glue” everything together. I then put a mold release coated sheet of metal on it, put a couple of boards on that, and then parked one wheel of my car on it to push everything together. A couple of days later I pulled it out, trimmed the edge, re-wrapped the vinyl at the bottom, and saved an original “unobtainable” door panel. It took some time, and cost a bit of money, but the owner took one look of the door panel and was very happy to pay the bill. Duane
Dano, As far as trying to re-stitch original door panels; The problem is the originals were stitched to the boards. Also the belts were sewn on with double needle machines with a fixture that would fold the vinyl ends over before they were stitched. You would need to take everything off the old boards, glue everything down to the new boards, and then, by hand, not foot pedal, move the wheel at the back of the machine, to “hit” every hole in those belts. We have also done this but it is very time consuming, and we only did this with a single pair of door panels. Why do you think I/ my company developed the methods to reproduce the 70-72 door panels? The answer is it was almost impossible to fix them. Good luck with trying to do the above. Duane
You can do anything if you try hard enough. I used to “sand” the brushed steel look back into 67 Mustang Deluxe door panel inserts, usually off Shelby’s and then send the finished pieces back to the owners. I made a fixture, a sanding block assembly, and used to use baby oil and pumice powder to put the “lines” back in. I was actually greatful when they finally got reproduced. Right now I am working on restoring 135 year old “cast in design” hardware for my Victorian house. First you need to find what is missing, which has taken 30 years to get everything, then strip/blast off the paint. Make sure everything works, and then paint everything copper. Our hardware was originally copper plated cast iron, and they have a paint out there that matches that look so close it’s not worth talking about. Again you can do anything, it just depends on how bad you want it. Maybe that makes us crazy, who knows. Duane
