New Door Cards

[donciuz]

Inspired by this thread I spent a few evenings after work in my garage.
Water damage to my door card was severe.


I wanted to save as much of my original card as possible. So I've cut the bottom ends off and made new ones from mdf.


Routed holes for speakers with my home made router


Then rounded the edges and made fixings


For waterproofing I used resin from a fiberglass repair kit. After it has hardened it is easy to sand and smoothen the rough edges.


Finally painted grey and assembled just to see how it will look when I receive my grey leather i have ordered.


To be continued

[boxer]

Planning a similar job on mine. Not as badly damaged but I want to take out the 4" speaker thats mounted at the top of the door and install bigger ones low down where the card is rotted. I like the vinyl so want to reuse the door card as much as possible.

[donciuz]

Too bad the 4 inch speaker holes vere enlarged before me. Now thinking what to do with them, as these speaker will not be used probably.

[boxer]

I've ordered some 90mm VW logos which should fit inside the outer mounting ring of the Blaupunkt 4" speakers not sure you will get a set that fit your redundant speaker though, may be able to glue a 90mm or larger over the mesh?
You have a router so could make a mount up easily enough to take up the gap?

[donciuz]

Received some artificial leather from Germany. Looks like original.
First using heavy duty spray adhesive I glued a layer of 3mm scrim foam.

Then the artificial leather. I had to use a heater gun to soften the fabric, because the temperature is too low and it is too stiff. Stapled the edges on the other side.

The last trial fitment.


Now thinking of doing the dashboard like that.

[Titus A Duxass]

Nice work there donciuz.
If you do the dashboard we need photos, it's something that I've been thinking about doing.

[boxer]

Nice job. the dash would be very intersting.

[donciuz]

The biggest issue is that dashboard needs a lot of material. Preferably in one piece Originally I planned to do just the door cards an maybe some other small bits so I bought only a length of one meter of material. It comes 1.4m wide. Its not so cheap you know and was sent from Germany I'll take the dashboard out this weekend as I was planning to anyway and see if I can strech it on. I promice to post pictures if I succeed

[donciuz]

I had some problems with the dashboard. When I tried to do it first time the glue I was using for the door cards failed me on the dashboard. After trying to adjust the material mostly all of it peeled clean off. I was so upset that I left this for two weeks. Today using new proper stuff I had another go. I used a whole can of this glue on it. This is now a soft dashboard as under the leatherette there is a layer of 3mm foam. Not a perfect job, but OK. Haven't fitted it on the car jet. Needs some cleaning as my fingers got dirty durint this.
Here is the pic I promised. Will post more as soon as I get all of it back in the van. Hopefully tomorrow...


p.s. a heater gun and a stapler are essential for this job.

[donciuz]

I ran out of daylight today, as running the cables for the sound system and tidying up took most of the time. But here is how it looks now. I'll finish it off next week hopefully.

[Titus A Duxass]

Nice!

What glue did you use and who did you get the material from?

[donciuz]

At first I used this glue. But not so happy with it. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/330778073924? ... 1439.l2649" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Next time my mate gave me a couple of half full cans of his glue he bought from a local autoparts dealer. That one was way better...

The leather I bought from Germany along with some other parts http://t3-umbau.de/product_info.php?products_id=1018" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Titus A Duxass]

Cheers for the links.

[TobyGilden]

Really pleased I found this post, a friend of mine bought me new speakers for the van, but they are 6" speakers and won't fit.

I am going to have a go at making some new door cards with the step out for the speakers.