So i had these busted cracked door panels in my sc and thought it might make a good diy. So here is the fiber glassing your sc door panels diy.

This is a complete tear down and rebuild of the panels. What i am doing is reinforcing the door panels using fiberglass cloth and resin.
i chose cloth because it is easier to work with then mat on the plastic parts.
here is a list of the things i have used so far and will use before im done.

a good respirator! important!

fiberglass resin 1 gal seems enough so far.
fiberglass cloth. (not mat) start with about 5 packages of the home depot cloth.

cheap paint brushes X15 or more.
acetone get 2 gallons.

small chemical resistant cup to keep your brushes in acetone.
and disposable cups for fiberglass mixing.

nitryle gloves. get a box of 100 so you can change gloves after every time you glass a section.
good sharp shears that can handel cutting glass.
bondo/body filler

metal scrapers and soft spreaders for the body filler.

a jigsaw,and dremel tool with sanding drums and cut off wheels.
an orbital sander or sanding blocks.
lots of sandpaper from 60 grit to 1500.

a heat gun helps!
drill screwdrivers.

mdf board. this wood is used to repair certain things on the panels and to create the new 6.5" speaker pods! hopefully
i bought a sheet of 3/4" mdf and 1/2" and 1/4" just in case
so far i have only used 3/4".


im sure there is more to this list! but on with the show

So start out by removing your door panels and taking them apart. your going to separate the two halves of each panel by removing all the screws from the backside.

so you got them all apart but dont remove the old vinyl yet. (assuming you are replacing the vinyl) trim the edges of the vinyl off that are wrapped around to the backside we need it gone so we can glass all the way to the edges.

now the target pieces that need most of the work are the plastic pocket/doorhandel. these are most of the problem with the doors!

first thing you want to do is use the dremel to cut and grind out all the plastic beams. these little plastic walls are no longer needed and get in the way of laying down the glass smooth. (make sure and leave all the screw mounting posts! dont cut those off unless they cant be used.



also take a rag and clean the plastic with acetone to remove any oils.!!!caution!!! acetone melts plastic!!! so just use a damp cloth and lightly wipe it quickly. do not soak it!



Prep the surface of the plastic by using rough sandpaper.
i also used a sanding fan on the dremel tool to lightly scuff the plastic.then come in again with the rough paper. you need the surface of the plastic to be pretty rough to get a good bond with glass.


Btw the reason i have gray pockets is because the beige ones were too broken to make the effort. so i picked up what i could find locally.

Now that your surfaces are prepped find all the bad cracks. first thing you wanna do is brace all the cracked parts while the vinyl is still on the top side. this way the vinyl holds the cracks mostly in place. use clamps. whatever you have to do to keep the cracks together and tight.

precut a bunch of glass cloth and keep it in a box in front of you. small medium and large pieces.

once you have mixed the resin you have about 5 minutes of work time before the glass starts to gell. so only mix a few tablespoons at a time and you will save a lot of resin waste.

so you have glassed up all the cracks and it feels better already! now you can fill in the large spaces working from the front by the speaker towards the back of the piece.

Glass layers? i did about 3 layers in all the large areas and more in the weak areas. you will know when its strong enough.

so about these 2 screw holes on the very front piece. these two holes are almost sure to be shattered to bits and the only thing holding them together is the vinyl.


I went over these with about five layers on the bottom and kept sanding them flat in between layers. you want to just glass right over the holes because we will drill those later. and build those holes solid on the bottom side and then when you remove the vinyl you can add 3 or more layers on the top side like this.



And then i addressed the broken screw ears on the bottom of the panels.


so these where pretty cracked and i decided to amputate! I cut each of the ears off. and used a piece of cardboard and masking tape to build new mounting ears out of the glass like this.

I shaped the cardboard to fit in the channel and placed it to where the top of the cardboard is a little below the top of the plastic. this way when i build layers of glass on top of the cardboard to get the thickness needed for the ears to be strong it will build up to level with the plastic.

 

i also shaved the middle screw ear completely. for two reasons i wont go into. not necessary but you can see it here.

http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/.../Photo0254.jpg
and here is how the ears were built.






After you have the right thickness built on the ears use the dremel to cut and grind the shape of the original ears.
and hopefully you end up like this.




And then i addressed a problem with broken screw posts that is right where your window buttons are at. this is what causes the little tear in the vinyl by the speaker. the part with the switches has two screws that come through the back of the panel and screw to two little plastic posts. once these plastic posts break the switch panel feels lose from the rest of the door frame. you get my point.
so the solution was to grind what was left of the 2 plastic posts off completely and mount a piece of mdf board in their place. the wood will hold better to the screws. making the panel feel solid. i also plan to use 4 screws there now instead of 2.

 

I must say! Good job! This is actually one of my plans for my car as soon as all mechanical problems are dealt with! I figured, since the old panels are made of plastic and because of the age of the car causing the panels to be brittle it cracks easily, I was gonna use the original panels as a mold for a fiber glass panel, making it lighter and tougher than plastic! Then just get it reupholstered! But still, good job my man! See you in 5 months! (My projected time to raise another enough funds to complete my interior!) LOL

 

I cut a piece of mdf to fit the shape and placed a layer of glass underneath it and clamped the mdf in place on top of the wet glass.

i then glassed over the mdf to get it real solid and make it weatherproof.





So now i have the mdf pieces glassed in and solid. when its time to assemble the door panel pieces back together i will drill pilot holes into the mdf pieces and screw 4 screws from the back side into the wood making the switch area very solid.
so it seams i have covered the most difficult areas. from there you may have other issues like broken off corners or whatever most of it can be fixed by using the glass.

I have covered the entire backside of the plastic pieces with glass including the leather door handle mounting area and all around the two beams that hold the 2 mounting screws for the leather door handle.
these mounting posts here! brace them good!

 

OK well that was the hard stuff. this has taken 3 weeks and im not done with the plastic parts yet. after all the glassing on those i will mount an mdf speaker mounting ring to each side and stretch some material over them to create the speaker pods. then both pieces will be covered in body filler to smooth the whole top part out. once the plastic pieces are all done and sanded i will move on to the cardboard back half of the door panels. these will only get one layer of glass cloth maybe two around the holes that hold the push pins. from there its on to the vinyl. so look for this thread over the next few weeks to grow. i decided against doing a mold because you have to consider after taking the mold you still have to secure the mold to the panels and the panels to the door. it would be a lot of design work. and this is already a long job. a mold could work too dont get me wrong its just a lot of extra work. and here is the vinyl! beige on black 2 tone door panels.

 

google how to use macro settings on your camera

;-)

 

kingphillip hey man no way fiberglass panels will be lighter then the originals. especially after adding all the mdf wood you would need to mount them. i have never seen a door panel mold from a car like this. molds are fine for old cars and trucks that have flat doors to mount to. but with all the work it would take to get the molds solid and mountable you would spend a lot in glass alone. and they would be heavy. glass is way heavier then carbon fiber. either way heavier is better in the case of the sc with its big doors. more inertia they should make a nice new noise when you close the doors after adding 10 pounds to each door just on the panels. and dont forget the dynamat too! it all serves to reduce road noise in the car. which my sc really needs

 

macro! haaaa! these are phone pics bro. lol best camera i got. sorry for the blurry 1 it does not do well indoors.

 

Very nice write up. Who cares about the weight. If mine very break again this will be added to my favorites.

 

It would be heavier? Demmit... I don't know if it already happened to your door hinges, but the problem is if the door panels become more heavier the door hinges would loosen, and the cylindrical metal thingy that keep the hinges together in the middle start falling/sliding out, (which is happening to my car right now), and its a PITA to hammer it every now and then so your doors wouldn't sag, and its even a PITA to get it fixed for $650. And btw this is actually a common problem for our cars since the doors are just too heavy, that's why I'm aiming to make the panels lighter.

 

yeah i have heard of the sagging doors though mine does not have this problem yet.

 

they could be lighter then stock if they were really thin. but i think it has a lot to do with how the doors are treated as well. maybe adding weight will make them close easier and not have to be yanked so hard. the body filler adds a lot of weight with doing speaker pods. and then there is the mdf mounting rings which will be 1.5" thick with 2 layers for inlaying the speaker. after having the thin brittle sc door panels i welcome the heavy solid panels.
i always thought the hood and trunk lid slammed with a nice solid sound on the sc and wished the doors felt the same you know.
besides adding weight just gives me an excuse for power and suspension upgrades

 

well i am almost done with the reinforcement part of the project and getting ready to build the speaker pods. here is some more pics.
after the screw ears are glassed and shaped i flipped the panels over and added a layer of glass to the top of the ears to bond them to the top and bottom they are now real solid.


you can see here that one of the mounting holes at the front of the panel was missing one piece of plastic. leaving the vinyl on allowed me to fill the missing part with glass and resin.


both pieces baking in the sun pretty much done.

so on to the back halves of the panels. i stripped all the vinyl off with the help of the heat gun and cleaned up old glue as much as possible. then i want to reinforce all the holes for the push pins like these.




also the holes for the wood panels.

then i figured out that the fiber board of the door panels soaks up the resin like a sponge. so no need for glass cloth on them. i just mixed up resin and painted it on. not too thick just enough to soak in to the panels. i just went around all the edges and screw holes.


that should make them a lot stronger without adding too much weight. next i will be cutting the speaker mounting rings. stay tuned!

 

alright well its still slow going but i am making some headway. here is the first mounting ring getting glued in. after i got it mounted i realized i should just seal off the hole for the stock grill. and glue and glass some t shirt in there if i had know before i glued the mounting ring in i could have avoided wrinkles in the t shirt but oh well it will work. so now the woofer will be enclosed from the door completely.
first i layed down masking tape so nothing gets glued to the back half of the panel.






next up stretch the fabric over it glass it in. to be continued.

 

Great project. Became a fan of your work with the custom sub enclosure you made. The only question I have is will the speaker housing you made for the door interfere with your leg as you sit in the car?