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Has anyone built custom door panels and interior panels for 6th gen ford trucks? I was thinking of using some modern door panel material and fibreglass to create openings and raised surfaces designed for speakers and armrests. Post your ideas or designs below
I went a more conventional way to get a semi modern look. The base of the panel is 1/4" plywood and the armrest is multiple layers of 1" plywood to achieve the contours I needed and the color insets. It was all then covered in 1/8" high density foam with vinyl over that. The base panel did not require any stitching but to cover the arm rest there was some seams that had to be sewn to fit the contours.
The screws are countersunk washer screws. If I were to do it again i would put flat washers under the vinyl to reduce the indentation the screws make. I wanted some indentation but I got more than I wanted.
The door speaker is close to the stock location. The last pic you can see the slight overlap of the OEM speaker hole. The overlap is about the amount that had to be removed from the door.
To have a reasonable amount of arm rest width the door lever had to be extended inward (towards the center of the truck) about 3/4". The allowed me to have a full 3" of arm rest and have the handle be flush with the armrest. As a side benefit it also added more leverage to the handle for opening the door (not that it was needed but it sure makes the door unlatch real easy and smooth now.
Cost wise these were fairly cheep, the wood cost way less than the vinyl did. Having flat spaces also made intergrating the power door lock and power windows switches pretty easy too.
Back in my "mini truck craze" days we used to do this. We'd carve the center console to a shape we like from a block of Styrofoam, cover it with fiberglass mat. After this cured we'd remove the fiberglass and have a formed hollow console, cover with favorite material, install switches, speakers and whatever. I never did door panels but friends have. I don't have any digital pics of it but you can find it on the "net".
I went a more conventional way to get a semi modern look. The base of the panel is 1/4" plywood and the armrest is multiple layers of 1" plywood to achieve the contours I needed and the color insets. It was all then covered in 1/8" high density foam with vinyl over that. The base panel did not require any stitching but to cover the arm rest there was some seams that had to be sewn to fit the contours.
The screws are countersunk washer screws. If I were to do it again i would put flat washers under the vinyl to reduce the indentation the screws make. I wanted some indentation but I got more than I wanted.
The door speaker is close to the stock location. The last pic you can see the slight overlap of the OEM speaker hole. The overlap is about the amount that had to be removed from the door.
To have a reasonable amount of arm rest width the door lever had to be extended inward (towards the center of the truck) about 3/4". The allowed me to have a full 3" of arm rest and have the handle be flush with the armrest. As a side benefit it also added more leverage to the handle for opening the door (not that it was needed but it sure makes the door unlatch real easy and smooth now.
Cost wise these were fairly cheep, the wood cost way less than the vinyl did. Having flat spaces also made intergrating the power door lock and power windows switches pretty easy too.
I built these door panels back in the mid 90's. I used 1/2" birch plywood for the overall door panel. I then made the armrest mount and speaker pod out of wood, and then fiberglass molds were made, and then the final pieces were made out of fiberglass. I then molded the two pieces together with fiberglass and had the vinyl vacuum formed to the fiberglass piece from a company in Arizona (I don't recall the company name, too long ago). The upper speaker pod has two 4" speakers and the lower area has two 6 1/2" speakers, the tweeters are in the AC vent areas.
