Interior Door panel upgrade to leather - real leather 3

kdetlor's picture
Offline

Kitchener, ON

Apr 21, 2010

It looks nice, smells nice and feels buttery smooth on the arm.  

Time to complete

10 mins to take the door off

2 mins to take the old lining off

.5 hrs to fix where it was broken (the really thin part at the handle, fix didn't hold btw, not worried about it though)

.5 hrs to layout and cut the leather

6 hours to glue and set the bottom leather, I used contact cement so I only did little strips at a time, let it tack up then repeat.  The biggest problem was the glue soaking into the leather and to door.  I used two small cans for one door.  Then I had to carefully trim, glue, set and poke at the leather were the lower panel separates the upper panel.  It is one piece but there is a deep valley there.

4 hours to do the top piece.  Getting the valley done was trickier because the lower panel was already in and I didn't want a huge mess on it.

15 minutes to apply new plastic liner onto the door interior.  I used about the same gauge plastic but I used roof tar in a caulking gun.  It seems like a good idea at the time but that stuff was too runny.  I'll investigate getting some other black tacky tape for the driver side.

5 minutes to reassemble.

Lifetime to enjoy

 

Some bubbles showed up after one day but since I used contact cement on both sides all I had to do was massage it back down.  Will it hold forever?  Time will tell.  The original bottom panel is almost falling off and the upper is looking a bit worn.  I didn't sand or otherwise treat the raw door so some pionts are telegraphing through.  You can see a small heat-stake mark in the pic.  Next time I'll try something to smooth it out a bit.  I SHOULD sand it but that would be really messy and I 'm working out of my apartment.

 

If I sold them I would ask for $250 per door PLUS your old door panel.

 

GTi-R, the best ugliest car I've EVER seen/driven. You can make it cool, you can make it fast but you CAN'T make it look pretty.

M4r1n's picture
Offline

Drummondville, Qc, Ca

May 3, 2011

Great mod!