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So after installing new speaker wire I decided to fix my door panels. I am surprised how these are built. I figured they would be all one piece or pretty close to it. Seems like it took Lexus too many tries to try to find the best way and then they just said "screw it, that one works." Too much money and not enough time I guess. Anyway on with the pics.
Last edited by onelt1; 10-30-14 at 04:40 PM.
Reason: spelling
You can see how bad of shape these are in. Now for what they look like afterwards. I am pushing down pretty hard just to see if it would hold and it does.
With a little bit of time and some cheap tools these came out looking pretty good and a lot sturdier than before.
I removed the broken pieces of plastic off of the screws, reinserted those pieces of plastic back into their hole, cut up some soft plastic into about 1/2 inch tall and 1/8 inch wide, width and height doesn't matter its just easier to manipulate. The plastic that is already there, sticking through the holes can be fixed too. So I used a heat gun, old plastic, scissors, pliers, and an old soldering iron. So you know that I used the scissors to cut up the plastic. The pliers are used to hold the plastic in place. The heat gun and the soldering iron do most of the work. I also used two heavy steel blocks, one to hold up the part of the panel I worked on and the other to push down on that area that is being worked on, basically sandwiching the area to the panel, so it doesn't move when the plastic is still hot, once its cool I moved onto the next section. I was able to do about 2 to 3 holes with the blocks. Anyway, the soldering iron was customized, I didn't have a tip on it, tried using the tip, but it broke off, so I used it without, worked great. The tip-less soldering iron was pushed into the holes and slightly into the panel, extra plastic was then put into the hole that was created and melted down with the heat gun, after that the plastic was smoothed out to create a button like the white plastic sticking out of the holes. I did those the same way and those are a lot easier, mainly because the plastic is already there you just have to melt it down. So after all this I could have simply said I plastic welded everything back together, but that wouldn't have been fun and you wouldn't have gotten the hole story. I hope you can understand this. If you need some help I can post some edited pics with what was done.
Can't really see the finished product. Can you post a finished pic?
What do you want, it back on the door? I mean the finished product is right there. My fingers are in the way plus there is a couple of pictures of the back side, all done. You may think I am an *** hole but those are the finished before and after pictures. I do have more pics, but I think maybe you should pay closer attention to the pics
10-29-14, 07:40 PM
Like new (almost)
