Has any of you'll tried restoring your interior door panels? The one's on my Dually are all 4 in really bad shape. I could find new or used one's for the front but I can't find any for the rear. With that being said I was thinking about doing something to them for 2 reasons. 1) I don't have a lot of money right now. 2) Since I can't find any for the rear I would have to try & match them to the new one's & that could be darn near impossible.

What do you'll think?

 

I think I'm going to try doing my own custom door panels when I get to the interior of my truck.

Something like This. Not sure how much the Rod Doors kit costs though. Could get pricey with 4 doors.

When you say your originals are in Bad shape, what's wrong? I guess you could use some of the same ideas that some used around here for restoring their dash. Have you seen those posts?

 

It's difficult to recondition the plastic, but can be done. There are scratch removers for anywhere from 10-30 bucks. You can get plastic dyes for about the same price. But if they are broken, another option would be custom make some door panels. Some plastic, cardboard, glue, upholstery, and staples you could make something that looks decent. If it's possible to see pictures of them as well, I might be able to give you better suggestions. Hope this helps

 

I'll try to post some pictures on here tomorrow. There not busted though, basically what's wrong is they have a lot of scratches all over them & a lot of the plastic is I guess what you would call removed?

 

hey there! I reconditioned my door panels by sanding, bondo-ing ( a little bit) and then using SEM products (prep and color coat). The stuff is freaking great. It bonds to the plastic with no stickiness and so far hasnt scratched off after 6 months. The top of my door panels was very badly sun-damaged and deteriorating so sanding it down to smooth and bondoing out the worst of the scratches was a good way to go for me. I didnt sand the whole door smoothe but i did knock down the texture all over so it's not as prominent.

Now, while i was deciding what direction to go with this, I thought about upholstering over the door panels. I bought some marine fabric (4-way stretch) the upholstery glue recommended by the folks at rod doors and basically followed the instructions they give for upholstering their door panels on a scrap one of ours i pulled from the jy. I think it would have worked if our door panels were flatter like theirs but my experiment was a FAIL because of all the really steep curves and valleys in the panel form. It left too many wrinkles for my taste. That said, I think i might try it again someday as I could see how it COULD look and i was liking the effect. In the end though, this is what my doors look like now and i dig it:

 

I love how that turned out. Looks fantastic. What grit did you use to sand it? And when you say "bondo-ing ( a little bit)" what do you mean?

 

Thanks!

So sandpaper: On the top of the door it looked like someone had a little fun with the cigarette lighter and made a series of deep rings. So i started with 80 grit on that. But most everywhere i used 120 and occasionally 220 when i was just roughing up and knocking down the supposed-to-look-like-leather stamped texture that's on there. The stamped texture that's already on there wasnt evenly pressed. Some places it was really noticeable and other places it was like it was barely imprinted. That actually helped me by making the totally smoothed and bondoed areas not stand out so much.

Bondo-ing a little bit was mostly around the gouges and lighter-ring-design someone put in the top. They were really deep so I needed some filler to build them up and fill them in.

 

Mine were gettin old and faded,but I didn't feel like sanding them down and painting them since I wasn't sure if i'd be keeping them,so I added some things to make them look better.These are the exact same door panels,just painted black,and with Ranger Lariat trim.

Before,




After,

 

Amazing what a little paint does, both door panels look pretty sweet.

 

[quote=Fordzilla80;8614090]




This is basically what my door panels look like all over. See the scratches on top? That's what mine look like. I was running late this morning & I forgot to take pictures of them so I'll do it this evening & post them. I like what I see here though & I think I'm going to try this.
girlwithatruck that looks really good!

 

thanks <b>muskratt</b> and guys...so far it's holding up really well...if you run across any of my other posts about my interior you'll see that i just cant say enough about SEM products...really good stuff.

 

Great idea there little lady! My panels are structurally sound, but most of the fake leather grain print is worn off, leaving a smooth surface. The red has faded to a pink-ish white from the sun up top, so they're really in need of a little attention.
I like the 2-tone look on those panels. I was planning to go 2 tone on the outside, so I might just copy it to the inside.

As for the sliders, I've been kicking around an idea on making my own, complete with a polished stainless bezel. If I go forward on this idea, I'll take pics and post up the results.

 

im in the middle of restoring the interior of my truck too. I have the same problem with sun damage, i plan to sand them completely smooth and then use sem texture coat on it. I also plan to fill the slider lock holes with plastic and bondo

 

How do you add pictures from your computer on to here? I took pictures of the door panels but I don't know how to put them on here.

 

You need an account at a picture hosting site like Photobucket.com. Then when you are making a post and want to insert a picture you click on the Picture Icon above the text box and paste the html link from your hosting site.