1972 Duster, 340/4, black on black (the endgame)
So let's restore some door panels.
On my trip to Oregon a couple years ago to strip a brother 72 340/4 speed TX9 Duster for suspension parts one of the bit pieces I grabbed were the trashed door panels that were rotting away in the back seat. They were indeed trashed but they were black and they were the same deluxe panels that were original to my car. So I took those as well with the thought I may be able to do something with them.
Turns out there was...
Way back in the day (remember-this project is closing up on 40 years) I made door panels for this car from a piece of corrugated plastic packing material I picked up on an odd job I had. And being the 1980s I had no reservations about covering the panels with fake fur-you may also remember I was building the car I wanted in high school and that was the cat's *** back in the day. However, fast forward 20 years or so and that zebra stripe got to be a bit much. Door panels, package shelf, headliner and dash pad was an awful lot of cheesy so I decided it had to go. The headliner was first of course-that cardboard one gave way to a black cloth one. Then the dash, which still has to be restored but it was a solid (tan) pad underneath and quite salvageable. Next would be stripping the fur off the plastic door panels I made with the idea of stripping the vinyl off the deteriorated chipboard/pressboard the originals were made from and gluing it to the plastic.
I started with the back seat panels because I just resumed work on the doors and they're not ready for panels yet, but here are the ones I picked up as "cores":
Not in the best of shape but I really have nothing to lose by trying but a little time. Here are the backsides of the ones I made showing the plastic cores I made for them:
Since the back seat area is coming together I started with the right side rear panel:
Not good, not terrible. They're drying out around the edges but hitting it with the heat gun softened the vinyl up quick and it peeled off the core pretty easily:
I warmed it up with the heat gun to ease out some of the wrinkles in the vinyl and glued it to the plastic core with some spray adhesive. Then I flipped it and glued the edges down and around with the same glue I used on the headliner:
A little more caressing with the heat gun and a bath in Purple Power later and ta-da, one rebuilt interior panel:
Not perfect and hardly show quality but it'll do the job and save me a pretty good chunk of change I can spend on buying aftermarket panels later if I wish.
Now the left side was a bit dicey:
Yeah, it shrank back a lot. I started by clamping the top edge down to the work table and started massaging and stretching the vinyl out with the heat gun:
With that improvement I pulled the vinyl off the old core and glued the back of the top edge to the new one. Then I clamped that down to the bench and started stretching it to fit:
Stapling it down helped it hold it's form while it cooled and while I went a little far on the back edge I doubt it'll stand out once the seat is in and it actually managed to stretch out quite a bit once it was heated up:
So let's restore some door panels.
On my trip to Oregon a couple years ago to strip a brother 72 340/4 speed TX9 Duster for suspension parts one of the bit pieces I grabbed were the trashed door panels that were rotting away in the back seat. They were indeed trashed but they were black and they were the same deluxe panels that were original to my car. So I took those as well with the thought I may be able to do something with them.
Turns out there was...
Way back in the day (remember-this project is closing up on 40 years) I made door panels for this car from a piece of corrugated plastic packing material I picked up on an odd job I had. And being the 1980s I had no reservations about covering the panels with fake fur-you may also remember I was building the car I wanted in high school and that was the cat's *** back in the day. However, fast forward 20 years or so and that zebra stripe got to be a bit much. Door panels, package shelf, headliner and dash pad was an awful lot of cheesy so I decided it had to go. The headliner was first of course-that cardboard one gave way to a black cloth one. Then the dash, which still has to be restored but it was a solid (tan) pad underneath and quite salvageable. Next would be stripping the fur off the plastic door panels I made with the idea of stripping the vinyl off the deteriorated chipboard/pressboard the originals were made from and gluing it to the plastic.
I started with the back seat panels because I just resumed work on the doors and they're not ready for panels yet, but here are the ones I picked up as "cores":
Not in the best of shape but I really have nothing to lose by trying but a little time. Here are the backsides of the ones I made showing the plastic cores I made for them:
Since the back seat area is coming together I started with the right side rear panel:
Not good, not terrible. They're drying out around the edges but hitting it with the heat gun softened the vinyl up quick and it peeled off the core pretty easily:
I warmed it up with the heat gun to ease out some of the wrinkles in the vinyl and glued it to the plastic core with some spray adhesive. Then I flipped it and glued the edges down and around with the same glue I used on the headliner:
A little more caressing with the heat gun and a bath in Purple Power later and ta-da, one rebuilt interior panel:
Not perfect and hardly show quality but it'll do the job and save me a pretty good chunk of change I can spend on buying aftermarket panels later if I wish.
Now the left side was a bit dicey:
Yeah, it shrank back a lot. I started by clamping the top edge down to the work table and started massaging and stretching the vinyl out with the heat gun:
With that improvement I pulled the vinyl off the old core and glued the back of the top edge to the new one. Then I clamped that down to the bench and started stretching it to fit:
Stapling it down helped it hold it's form while it cooled and while I went a little far on the back edge I doubt it'll stand out once the seat is in and it actually managed to stretch out quite a bit once it was heated up: