Door panel maintenance, suggestions.

[giovannidc]

Hi all,
i was wondering if any of you has attempted to restore the door panels of a 3 door 147. My car is overall in good shape but i can't stand the floppy fabric that has unglued itself off the armrest and the general state of the window switches. Any suggestions in regards to any of these jobs? How feasible would it be to use spray adhesive to, at least, get the fabric glued back again?

[Citroënbender]

It's "orange rot" which makes this happen, the bonded foam behind the fabric dies of old age and turns to an orange-yellow dust.

Luckily the 147 panels are designed so that they can be "unpicked" fairly easily, it requires slicing/sawing/grinding away some plastic welds and releasing a bit of hot melt glue to free the upholstered panel.  If you can wash the fabric clean of old foam, it should be fairly easy to bond a new layer with trim adhesive spray. 

[giovannidc]

Cheers, i was just watching some videos regarding the removal of the panel and it seems pretty alright.
Also i do hate that fabric anyway and i'd prefer to have leather as it would match the seats.
Might start with the passenger side one of these days.

[johnl]

I tried re-gluing the old fabric on my doors. As CB has said, the 'orange rot' is what allows the fabric to separate, not the glue 'letting go'. To re-glue, all the rotted foam and the underlying old glue needs to be removed, as the new glue doesn't 'want' to adhere to the old glue. This is not easy because the underlying door card structure is some sort of 'particle board' that is very porous, and deeply impregnated with old glue. I failed to remove it all, and as a result the new glue didn't adhere properly (I used contact adhesive). So, after all that work the fabric lifted again after a few days, and I gave up. 

Assuming you are successful at removing all the old glue, and want to use a new covering material, I think you'll need to use something very pliable and stretchy because where the fabric covers the door card the shaping is quite deep with a complex concave / convex curved surface. At the edges of the covered area, the edges of the covering material are 'tucked' into a tight space. It will be difficult to cut the new material to accurately fit into the space at the edges, considering that the material also needs to be stretched to fit over and into other convex and concave areas of the shaped surface. Even using the old fabric which was already cut and 'pre-shaped-stretched' to fit and conform over the surface of the card, I found that this will place tension on the fabric, which will tend to pull on it, and so pull the fabric away from some areas you are trying to glue it onto. I think using new fabric or leather would be even more difficult.

I'm not saying it's not possible to do this, but personally I'd be looking on a certain well known online sales site at the prices for new door cards as a more viable and less frustrating option...

Regards,
John.

[johnl]

The switches. My passenger side switch was just dirty and cleaned up nicely with white spirit (metho from memory). The drivers' side switch had areas where the black coating had worn away (revealing unsightly areas of the white plastic from which the switch body is made).

I removed the switch from the door, then removed the four way mirror button (it can be done, can't recall exactly how I did it). I then cleaned the switch body thoroughly and 'keyed' the surface with Scotchbrite. Next I covered the two window buttons with tape, then sprayed the switch body with a couple of coats of flat black paint. After the paint had cured I removed the tape from the window buttons, refitted the mirror switch to the body, and re-installed the whole thing in the door.

It now looks much better than it did. The paint doesn't perfectly match the appearance of the unpainted passenger side switch, but since the swtiches are on opposite sides of the cabin it's not really noticable.

Regards,
John.

[Citroënbender]

The driver's control switch is the only one not with black substrate, the others clean up easily as mentioned - but I dismantle them carefully first.

A new five door switch assembly for the RHD driver's door is retail priced at more than many 147s now sell for.