0NF1R

okay, for those of you that have leather interior might also have the leather trim on your door panels as well....well the leather that is on my door panels is now separating from the door and is sagging and will soon come off completely....i went to the stealership and they said the only fix is to buy new door panels at $300 each...i went to an upholstery shop and they said it was pretty involved and would take about 4 hours to do and cost like $300-$400....so right now im just like "wtf do i do?"....have any of you had this problem? what should i do?

pascal

Take the door panel appart yourself and bring the insert with you to the upholstery shop.
It will be a lot cheaper...
You might have to do both sides if they can't match the perforated skin though.

MTAS

I could be wrong, but I don't there's an insert per se. The vinyl he's talking about is glued to the hard vinyl/plastic recessed area of the door and isn't separate from the door panel itself.

Stang-aholic

can you post a few pics of it? is it just a piece of leather or is it actually built into the door thanks. you could be able to use special glue and put it back.

0NF1R

i dont have a pic of mine right now but here is a pic so you can get the idea....


if you look at the driver side door panel, you'll see that leather trim that goes above and below the arm rest...well the top portion of that leather is seperating and has air space in between it and the panel...its like its kind of balooning out...i have to find a wau to "glue" it back....

im guessing ill have to remove that arm rest and see if i can managing to get some glue back there...

partsbill

I had the same problem, my trim shop here at the dealer that I work for said that the heat here in South Florida cause the material to shrink and pull away from the panel, if you look close you'll notice that Ford did not wrap the material around, there is only enough material to tuck it in, he told me that it would be very hard to do it right with the original material because there just isn't enough to work with, I was able to get my panels covered on a good will claim by Ford, I'm going to keep my old panels and redo them myself so that 3 years from now when it happens again I'll have some ready to go,
in your owners manual there is a phone number for Ford Customer Service, call and tell them about what's happening, I'm sure your call won't be the 1st complaint, they might be able to help you get them cover under warranty even if your out of wearranty.

pascal

It's a two piece door panel but that insert is secure to the rest of the panel by heat pressing/melting those round tabs from the factory, I believe, so it's kinda tricky to separate the two withiut messing anything up.

Some folks have successfully done that job, so it's proof that it can be done.


I was wrong.
It's not a two peice panel, according to JoshGT.
He has the same problem too...

0NF1R

so is there a fix for it other than getting the door panels replaced under my warranty that expired 14k miles ago or buying new panels out of my own pocket?

pascal

Have you checked the bone yards?
It's worth a try...

0NF1R

not many in my area but ill give it a shot....