Without spending an arm and leg, what have you done to/with your door panels to clean 'em up or secure.

The drivers side on my 86 upper trim is flopping loose and has been repaired numerous times. Now I'm considering using an interior screw to finally be done with it. Not to mention the plastic is shrinking and exposing the ugly edges.

 

Ok I have a 95 and the panels were a little different.
But my panels were also floppy so I strapped them down with some straps so that the cracks on the internal braises. I added some steel mash for reinforcement. Finlay I put a polyurethane type adhesive. It's holding for now.

If you want to know more check out my thread on how I did all the stuff on my vette. It's all photographed there and written up.

Best of luck to you.

 

I had similar problems with my door panels. The upper trim moulding was warped and seperating and generally looking tired and sloppy. To compound the problem, my local Chevrolet dealer's mechanics had, at some point, tried to force the right panel off without getting ALL the screws out and had literally cracked the panel in half.

As part of my door panel restoration project I removed the panels and used a fiberglass repair kit I purchased at Lowes to repair the back side cracks & splits. I used a fiberglass mat cut to cover the long cracks overlapping each crack by about 3" on each side. I covered the mat with a heavy dose of the epoxy-based fiberglass filler, positioned the panel to assure that the crack remained tightly closed and allowed the panel to dry for over 24 hours. I then spray painted the repaired area with a semi-gloss black paint. The paint was not really necessary, but it made the white fibreglass repair area look a little better.

I then purchased new replacement upper door panel trim pieces from Ecklers (http://www.ecklerscorvette.com/corve...1984-1989.html). These trim pieces are the heavy duty version with metal threaded studs which allow you to BOLT the trim strips in place. The cheap trim pieces with plastic studs which tend to snap off are worthless.

Here is a photo of the restored door panel which has now passed NCRS judging on several occasions without any point deductions or even so much as a comment.