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Door cap refurbishment Article by: Mike Bressington Spring is in the air
and my thoughts turned to ways of doing something about the interior of
the car to pretty it up a bit for summer. The carpets have signs of water
damage and the veneer has started to crack and de-laminate in places.
The leather is also in need of some restoration but apart from a good
cleaning this can wait for another time. The veneer door strips over the
years have also seen better days. I phoned around for a few quotes to
get these re-veneered but these came back at least £100+ to do the
work! As you can see from the pictures below the door cap 'veneer' had started to crack and flake off badly. After a little research I discovered that the wood is not actually a veneer or indeed even wood!
It is an aluminium
rod that is attached onto the door panel with a few bolts that run in
a slot on the back. The aluminium half round face is then covered in a
brown paint to match the rest of the proper wood in the car. The paint
then has a wood effect grain 'film' bonded to the top of it to give a
wooden look and feel. The whole lot is then sealed using a thin varnish
to protect the 'grain' and to give it the same lustre as the other wood
used in the car. Over the years the
varnish had cracked probably due to the extremes of humidity, heat and
cold the car endures. The wood effect had flaked off in many places in
large chunks and the whole lot now looked very unsightly and needed doing
badly. After counting my pennies in my 'secret TVR slush fund' (come on
boys admit it we have all got one!) I decided that I could not afford
to have these done professionally and my only option was to go for plan
'B' - the cheap DIY option. Plan 'B' consisted
of somehow removing the interior leather door trim panels. Somehow removing
the varnish and wood effect paint from the door strips and then somehow
cleaning up the metal and then hope it would all turn out ok - some plan
eh?! The leather covered
door panels are held in place by several large self-tapping screws that
run along the bottom of the trim panel. If you have the rear black plastic
false 'door panel speaker' bezels these will have to be removed as well
as these four screws also help hold the leather panel in place. The top
of the panel then sort of hooks over the inner fibreglass door skin. With
a bit of moving about the door panel should lift clear (after remembering
to disconnect the real front speaker wires!). The door cap strip
is then held in place by five small bolts that protrude out of the rear
of the door panel. These will be rusty and might need a little 'persuasion'
with a spanner or a squirt of WD40 to remove. Undo the bolts and the strip
can then be lifted out from the panel. At this point be careful not to
bend the strip as it is only aluminium and might get distorted if you
use too much force. I set about removing the varnish with quite coarse medium grade sandpaper (18p a pack of five sheets in Tesco's Extra), this had the effect of removing large amounts of the brown paint and wood effect film in very little time. I made sure that I kept sanding in the lengthways direction so as to try and create a brushed aluminium look in the metal.
Once the majority
of the varnish was removed with the sandpaper I then used wire wool on
the metal, again ensuring to keep the direction lengthways along the strip
to enhance the brushed effect. One tip though when doing this try and
use disposable gloves as the black and brown fine powder that comes off
is a mare to get off your hands afterwards….and your living room
carpet - do this outside! Once I was happy that
all of the imperfections on the metal were 'brushed' out I used a degreaser
on the metal surface to give it a thorough clean and buff up. I then used
a spray sealer / varnish obtained in B&Q (£4.99) and gave the
strips an even spray coat, this would ensure that passengers would not
get marks on their clothes or hands after touching the bare aluminium.
After several
hours the strips were completely touch dry. The sealer once cured dried
completely transparent to clearly show the detailing of the brushed aluminium
beneath. In my opinion the door strips looked excellent and as luck would
have it, were also an exact match for the Clarion speaker bezels that
were mounted directly beneath the strips on the door panel. Whilst the strips were drying I decided to take the opportunity to grease all of the door lock and window lift mechanisms. I also used silicone spray along the window runners to help the glass along. I can recommend doing this as afterwards the window glass shot up and down at near light speed instead of the usual will it / won't it make it to the top syndrome. Another thing I took the opportunity of doing is getting some sticky backed plastic and sealed all of the inner door skin access holes up. Originally these would have been sealed at the factory to help stop draughts getting into the car at speed but over the years previous owners had opened these up to carry out work on the window lift workings and had not bothered to seal them back up again. The final thing I did before refitting the whole lot was to clean the leather door panel, this being a light magnolia colour had become incredibly grimy and soiled looking. I used 'Jif' scouring liquid in very small quantities and with a clean damp cloth started to clean the leather.
Now using this method does indeed clean the leather without a doubt but you also have the danger of over doing it and taking the leather off - especially if the leather has been 'painted' on over the years - be very careful. The other downside of using something like 'Jif' is that it incredibly dries out the leather and will make things worse unless you have good quality leather feed to apply straight after. I used 'Langs' leather dressing paste as supplied by Richard Thorpe at RT Racing which gave a very good result.
The difference was
astounding; you do not realise just how dirty the leather is until you
start cleaning it and make a clean spot! Using the above cleaning process
the results were very satisfying. If in doubt however employ a more conventional
method of leather cleaning using purpose made cleaning products. After
re-bolting the door cap strip to the nice clean leather door panel the
whole lot was re-fitted to the car using brand new self tapping screws,
as the old ones were now loose. The entire job did
not taken long but now the leather was clean, the windows operated as
they should, the door locks locked! I no longer had draughts coming through
the door when going down the motorway and best of all the door caps looked
brilliant. Total cost £5.17, it is also a relatively easy job and the results are more than satisfying especially for the cost - give it a go.
Best regards Mike |
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