I'm in the middle of an interior overhaul on my 75. The last thing I have left to fix up is the door panels. They are in terrible condition. The vinyl is cracked in lots of places, the inserts in the upper trim are coming unglued, and the driver's side even has a section of vinyl missing from the bottom.

Trying to figure out the best course of action here. The inside of the panel isn't in that bad of shape and the door hardware can be cleaned up easily enough.

I don't have any pictures of the panels at the moment, but given the description of the panels, would doing a re-skin be sufficient to fix the vinyl? Or would I be better off just getting a new basic panel and transferring my hardware to it?

Another thing I'd like to do is get the black trim insert that the 77's had but it's shape is just a little different then the 75's so won't fit. Which leads to another question... Could I get the upper trim from a 77 to use with the black insert and still have it fit on my 75 door panel or would I need to get an entire 77 panel? I prefer the black over the wood grain personally.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

I have never seen a good re-skin job. Get the new basic panels and transfer the hardware. The 1977 black insets will work.

 

Wow! Nice interior!

Unfortunately I thought the 77's black inserts would fit looking at the pictures in catalogs, so I bought them. They don't fit right... The curve is slightly different and so is the overall size so it leaves pretty ugly gaps. Did you mean the chrome upper trim the inserts glue into?

I see you have a USB connector on your radio... Which model did you go with?

Also like the added Polk Audio speakers... I'm doing basically that same mod.

 

You are probably running into the old repros-don't-fit problem. Those black inserts should fit properly. Return them.

That is not a USB connection. It is MP3. This updated pic shows it with a 2GB IPod Shuffle. I have about 75 tunes on there. I believe it holds 500. The head is a KHE-300.



I get a little boom-boom from an 8" Blaupunkt sub-woofer with integrated amp in the back.

 

Ah, that looks like that radio I'm considering. It's amazing how expensive the retro-style ones are.

Any suggestions as to where to get inserts that would actually fit? These came from Corvette America...

 

With the Chinese invasion in recent years I do not know where to turn these days. Get back to Corvette America and explain the problem.

 

So I returned my door panel inserts to Corvette America and ordered a set through Eckler's. Well, guess what?! Eckler's gets those from Corvette America... So now I'm sending these ones back

Anyway, checked with Zip to see about their inserts. Apparently they get theirs from Corvette America as well. The response from the customer support was: "Apparently, there must be a slight difference between the door panels; otherwise, it would seem that they should fit properly."

Well, I think I'm giving up on finding a set of premade black inserts. I tried painting my old beat up teak inserts but the wood gain made it look bad and it wouldn't go away with sanding and more layers of paint. Maybe I'll try to fab my own from masonite before getting a set of walnut inserts...

 

The black inserts are made from formica laminate. You can make your own by making a template of the area just inside of the raised edge plate the insert fits into and cutting/filing/sanding to a perfect fit. Laminate is not hard to find.

 

Most vendors quit selling door skins because of the less than satisfactory fit after a whole lot of hard work. My advice would be not to try and avoid the fustration.

Purchase new reproduction panels or look for a used pair in better condition than what you have.

 

Please believe me, re-skinning the door panels is a real PITA and the grief is not worth the cost of new 'basic' door panels. All the hardware on your present panel can be moved over (carefully, so as to get them properly placed) to the new panels.

I've done the 're-skin' job once. It came out OK...but I would NEVER do it again.