DIY DOOR CARD FABRIC (Should work for all models)
Ok. So I had no fabric on my door cards of my BD5. That's right...all four of them had no fabric on them. So instead of having to press my luck to see if there were four decent ones at a junk yard, I decided to redo them myself. It honestly was not even hard at all. It will take you about 1 hour to do all four, and it will look just as good as the OEM install. So lets get down to business....to defeat....the huns.
Ok I'm done. Lets really do this now.
Here are the tools and supplies you are going to need:
1 Yard of Fabric
Spray Adhesive
Philips Screwdriver
Scissors
Chalk Pen/Sharpie (This makes marking out the fabric MUCH easier)
Plastic Trim Tool (optional)
That is all you need.
Now total cost for this whole project should be less than $20 depending on the price of the fabric that you buy.
Here is the fabric that I decided to go with:
I didn't want to use anything flashy, so this dark patterned fabric was what I went with. Plus I personally liked the design of it as well.
Now first things first is to take off the door card itself. You should be able to pop the door card edges off fairly easily by hand, but you can use a plastic trim tool or even a flat head screwdriver to help take it off. There will be two (2) screws on the door card that hold the door card to the actual door
(Yes I know the door card shows the new fabric, I forgot to take a before picture, lol)
After you remove the door card, you can either sit it on the ground plugged in or you can disconnect the window controls. Personally, I just let it sit on the ground so I didn't have to deal with unplugging and plugging it back in. Now on the back off the door card, you will need to unscrew a series of nine (9) screws, as seen here:
As you can see there is a circle over the styrofoam. There is a screw hidden underneath it, as you can see here:
Once you have this section of the door card off, if you have fabric on it and are wanting to put new fabric on, go ahead and take it off. It should be very easy to take off. If you don't have any fabric there, then you don't have to worry about taking anything off.
Once you have the fabric off, lay your fabric pattern side down. Then lay your door card plastic face down. Once you have your plastic piece in a good spot on the fabric, take your chalk pen/sharpie and mark 1" - 2" (one to two inches) away from the plastic piece. This will allow for any play room and will allow for a better wrap.
Now you can cut out each piece separately, or you can mark each piece and cut each one out after marking off all four. You can see I wrote "FD" on this one to label my "Front Driver" panel.
Once you have each piece cut out, take your first piece and and spray the front of it generously with the spray adhesive. This will allow for enough adhesive to be on it to hold the fabric in place. Let it sit for about 20-30 seconds so that It can become sticky. Once it is sticky, set your fabric on the panel and use your hand to smooth out the fabric through out the whole piece. Let it sit for about another 30 seconds to so that the fabric can adhere to the plastic piece well.
Once the fabric is set, flip the panel over. We are now going to work on the edges. The best way to get the fabric to wrap around the edges that I found to work out very well, is to work each edge separately. Spray the adhesive along the edge and just enough on the back side of the panel, so that when you wrap the fabric on the edge, you can also adhere the excess fabric to the back to give it an extra place to hold down the fabric so that it doesn't come off after reinstalling it.
When you get to the more predominant rounded section of the panel, make a few notches to help allow the fabric to wrap around that edge.
After taking this picture, I found that the best place to make your cuts are parallel to the points where the panel screws back in. This way, when you go to wrap around the edge, the fabric will actually separate away from that screw point and you won't have to make any extra cuts to get around those spots.
Once you wrap the fabric around all the edges and corners, the install process is just reverse. Line up the panel to the door card and screw it back in. If the corners bubble a little, take a flat head screw driver and carefully push the corner in, or check to see if you have the corner wrapped tightly.
Once you have all the panels installed, go for a drive and enjoy your newly updated door cards.:happy6:
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