Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - 08:22 pm, by: Lawrence Ostle(Lawrence)
Like most of us, my door trims are in a bad state. I bought a spare set, and have started to refurbish them - kind of like a little project. I have concentrated on the bottom half of the door trim, and have so far stripped off the vinyl, foam and glue. Once I had removed the vinyl, the door trim basically crumbled. I would suggest that most of our trims are held together by the vinyl covering! The plastic was very brittle due to its age. It is also quite thin, and some sections are narrow and prone to breaking. It was so bad I had to completely fabricate a new section of the door trim around the drivers window controls out of perspex, as it was unusable. I then applied a thin layer of fibreglass over the entire outside of the trim - including the speaker grill. Reason being, the width of the door trim near the grill is only about one cm, and it could crack again. I intend to make a slightly smaller opening once I have progressed further, which will be hopefully be much less prone to cracking. The door trim is now very sturdy, and I will be sanding and filling with bondo over the weeks to come.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 09:34 am, by: Mitchell Comfort(Bombercomfort)
lol Stripped it looks like its been at the bottom of the sea for years lol. Where did you buy the spare from. I need one for too. Also how much did it set you back?
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 03:27 pm, by: Lawrence Ostle(Lawrence)
Bought the set from Daniel Savage on this forum, $150 the pair, delivered. But consider I bought them with the purpose of refurbishing them and took any colour, and in reasonable condition.
Mike Beck Goo Roo New Zealand Soarer Limited UZZ31 V8
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 08:18 pm, by: Lawrence Ostle(Lawrence)
An update - sanded down the fibreglass and filled in the obvious imperfections. Sanded again and sprayed satin black. I drilled a number of holes where the speaker is, and I'm now in the process of covering the entire unit with gray microsuede...
The red circles below show the sections I have had to either repair or build up from scratch as they had either broken or crumbled away.
Friday, January 30, 2009 - 03:55 pm, by: Lawrence Ostle(Lawrence)
just wait - the retrim in microsuede is almost done, and they look the business if I may say so. The ONLY problem is that I will probably not be able to help myself doing the entire interior in the same material.....!
Monday, February 02, 2009 - 08:23 am, by: Lawrence Ostle(Lawrence)
Mike, that's going to be in a week or two, as I'm doing this very much when I have an hour available here and there. I will post some pictures of the one side now I have covered the trim in microsuede though.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009 - 04:10 pm, by: Lawrence Ostle(Lawrence)
Matt, the door controls you see in the picture are the standard ones that come with the spruce interior and are spares I have been using to make sure they still fit the holes after the fibreglassing, filling, sanding etc. The ones in my car have been sprayed medium satin gray already and are reasonably close.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009 - 09:32 am, by: Lawrence Ostle(Lawrence)
Matt, the controls you see in the picture are standard - not resprayed, not relabelled. The ones that are IN my car I sprayed and left unlabelled - I know which controls do what. I guess one could use something like Letraset to recreate the labels if you REALLY wanted to http://www.letraset.com/design/shopdisplaycategories.asp?id=76&cat=Lettering