During the course of the re- paint the body shop did some extensive damage to the door panels in order to remove the mirrors and door hardware.

They attempted to find replacements but with a '92 SC that is a highly unlikely outcome so instead I located a craftsman to restore what he could.

Below is one photo of several others I will post later when I get home.

 

"If you break it, you buy it"....

 

P_o

The body shop couldn't do body work?

 

Clearly there is an issue...........


............there's no door panel.

 

where is the door panel? Is it that bad?

 

Got home around 10:30 PM...

Here are some "before" and several depicting the progress of what he fixed. I will take a few "after" pictures tomorrow... He did a great job and the majority of the repairs are structural where he rebuilt many of the tabs and fittings that hold the panel onto the door.

The repair of the torn leather and the final results are impressive given where this started....

 

A few more.... The last one shows the leather repair before the color and texture process...

 

All those door panel cracks are common. After 21 years of abuse it's only natural for some of the plastic pieces to crack upon removal. The repair guy looks like he knows what he's doing. That bandaid approach on the door trim looks clever. I might do that to mine. Curious as to what this is costing. I've repaired the majority of my cracks with liquid nail as eseen in other threads, but epoxy works good too.

 

That shop should have known not to touch your car. Those cracks were already there, all he did was get to be the unlucky SOB that opened it up and found them for you. So guess who gets to fix or replace them............

 

Agreed; the cracks and dried out plastic was one thing but tearing the leather liner and the leather near the window switches was the issue. Worse is the guy lied to owner and claimed the frame was broken before he took it off (the door panel and frame on that side had NEVER been removed before) and he tried to repair it which made the task of the restoration that much harder for the craftsman.

I paid for the repairs and now the task of coming to an agreement on the reimbursement is next..... I really only expect them to pay for the passenger door and I will pick up the rest.

 

It WAS cracked on top across the frame before he removed it. They all crack right there. It's SC law. Once he removed it, the leather split. He's in an unlucky spot, I'd have known better than to take the job in the first place. NEVER take an SC door panel off unless hell freezes over and you have to.

 

Final pics on this topic.....

The "before" and after for each of the tears. The first pic has the tear near the switch with the top of that pic showing the break above which the tear started and progress later to almost all the way through. The last pic shows the final repair of the tear on the frame with a slight ripple that could not be avoided.

Edit: Found a better "before" pic which is added.....

 

Repairs look good. The shop definitely should have seen that the plastic structure was cracked before prying at the door panel or window trim. That's one expensive fix if they had to replace those parts, almost $800 in parts even with our Sewell discount. Hopefully they'll give you some money for at least repairing the vinyl, after all they did make it worse.

 

I have a'93 with beatup panels and they are not split like that. I installed door speakers and window control switch and they did not crack. SC law, my ***.

 

once the plastic part cracks, the first time you stress the leather it will tear, or if you have passengers that like to put their elbows up there on the trim. you have to be very very careful on removal then to not tear it.