Another custom door panel question

First of all Orange county is a great place, secondly you could use sheetmetal but it would be heavy and noisy, I say either use fiberglass, mold it over some aluminum flashing, it will peel right off of the fiberglass, or you could use some urethane plastic you can get in a 4'x8' sheet for about $50 at a plastic supply place.

take the old panel and graft that part onto the new one

wait...what?...

patgizz said:

take the old panel and graft that part onto the new one

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did he say this wrong or am i missing something? if you were gonna graft a piece on why would you need the old panel at all? i want to do tsomething similar to my 91 towncar. yea i been digging!!! see the date on this post haha.

~Jason
(516) Drum Co.

1970CDV said:

In my 1970 Coupe de Ville ive decided to toss the stock door panels and fabricate some custom ones. As far as the majority of the panel i know exactly what to do... but im still going to have one problem. i only know how to make flat panels. once mounted this will leave me with about a 2 inch gap between the top of the panel and the bottom of the window. im sure there has got to be something i can use like a thin piece of sheet metal i can bend...then seal the whole thing together. but if anyone has a better suggestion please let me know. i dont want this to turn into another nightmare.

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I faced the same problem with my S-10. I ended up using the stock panel after cutting out the “lumps”. My goal was to have a flat clean looking door panel. After cutting out the undesired shapes I used ¼” masonite to fill in the gaps and make the panel flat. By using the stock panel most all the stock mounting (outer edge) points were available. There’s a picture in my Project Journal. The armrest was shaped from a piece of pine board then covered with closed cell foam and vinyl. The armrest is attached from the back with T-Nuts and 3 bolts. The door panel is covered with closed cell foam and tweed.

PVC foamboard can be heated and formed to the shape you want, but why not use the tops of the old panels, combine that with new lower panels and save yourself a giant headache? I assume the tops of the old panels are metal, right?