kenny bloggins

man. sometimes you have something so busted and uggg that its so nice to just redo it. i felt this way about my trucks door panels...the previous owner had halfway ripped them off because the door lock mechanism and handle were sort of messed up. so when i fixed the lock and handle, there was no reason to not have nice, new panels!

start with making a template. i used wall board cause its easy to cut, cheap, and doesn't weigh too much.

don't forget to drill holes to mount it! basically use the old door panels as templates, if you don't have em, or they're real messed up (cough cough) then guesstimate! hold em up to the door til they're just right.

make sure you're helpers are ready to help.

let them know that standing on the stuff you're working on isn't actually helpful.

for insulation, i used a thin sheet of foam that was originally purposed for laying down hardwood flooring.

glue it all down! probably should have been using liquid nails or epoxy, but my final plan is to re-do these so i wanted something easily removable. hot glue will work just fine for now.

done! keep everything nice and smooth, don't want wrinkles in your door!

lay out the fabric you are going to use. make sure the pattern is straight and even, lets just admit it and say that maybe if it was crooked it would drive us crazy forever and ever.

and lookit that. door panel, DUN. now lets try to mount that thing to the door!

yee-haw! your truck door is now quieter, and its nice to have the hardware all back on it. there ya go!
finding hardware to fit the holes in the door was kind of a pain in the butthole. the holes in the door were an odd size, 1/4" bolts and 5/8" bolts both didnt fit, nothing metric did either. i ended up using plastic pop rivets, and so far, they're working OK. i'll probably do something different when i recover em with vinyl, but for now we're good.