Hello again everyone,
I haven't found any other threads covering disassembly and re-assembly of the door panel. The need for the repair is probably pretty nitpicky for most but the marks on the panel had been bothering me since I picked up the truck.
This evening I decided to dive into attempting to replace the marked up piece of my driver's door panel with one I picked up from the "Parting Out" section of the forum. I believe the donor panel was from a 1999 Land Cruiser with gray interior. Originally I thought that I could just grab the replacement door panel and swap it out. Sounds like a great and simple idea. From the pictures it looked like I would just have to swap out the piece that runs behind the grab handle because sometime between 99 and 07 they decided to change from dark blue to gray. Well, the panel showed up very quickly after being shipped. I got home from work and took it out to the truck to swap it out. Well after a bit I noticed that the 1999 gray and the 2007 gray were quite different. I wouldn't be able to swap the panel without either dying the entire thing to match the rest of the truck or try and dissect the part I needed. I already had a vinyl spray paint that matched the door panels pretty closely. The speaker grilles were pretty ratty when I got the truck and instead of trying to recover them or buy replacements I just stripped off the fabric, cleaned them, and then painted them to match the door panel. Anyway, I went with the second option. After looking at the panel it looked like it was just stapled together where the parts meet. At least I was hoping they wouldn't be glued together or a single piece. So I took the donor panel and started pulling staples. I had already removed the grab handle and the piece that sits behind it. Fortunately once I got the staples out the parts separated pretty readily. So then I pulled the door panel out of the truck and disassembled that panel as well. I used a standard staple gun with 1/2" T50 staples to put everything back together. Then I used some needle nose pliers to bend and compress the staples together. I'm pretty happy with the end result. Little by little I'm getting rid of the mess that the PO left this truck in.
The door panels don't exactly match. Even after I cleaned on the donor panel the color was still pretty different.
These are the marks I intended on getting rid of.
The back of the door panel where the two pieces meet.
The part successfully removed.
Reassembled and reinstalled on the door.
All in all the project probably took about 45 minutes from start to finish. I had the kids helping me so it took a little longer than if I was working alone. Turned out to be a pretty simple fix and I think the end result looks much better than before. I'm sure any of the door panels can be disassembled in the same manner. Maybe this post will help someone else sort out some nitpicky interior issues.
Thanks for looking.
I haven't found any other threads covering disassembly and re-assembly of the door panel. The need for the repair is probably pretty nitpicky for most but the marks on the panel had been bothering me since I picked up the truck.
This evening I decided to dive into attempting to replace the marked up piece of my driver's door panel with one I picked up from the "Parting Out" section of the forum. I believe the donor panel was from a 1999 Land Cruiser with gray interior. Originally I thought that I could just grab the replacement door panel and swap it out. Sounds like a great and simple idea. From the pictures it looked like I would just have to swap out the piece that runs behind the grab handle because sometime between 99 and 07 they decided to change from dark blue to gray. Well, the panel showed up very quickly after being shipped. I got home from work and took it out to the truck to swap it out. Well after a bit I noticed that the 1999 gray and the 2007 gray were quite different. I wouldn't be able to swap the panel without either dying the entire thing to match the rest of the truck or try and dissect the part I needed. I already had a vinyl spray paint that matched the door panels pretty closely. The speaker grilles were pretty ratty when I got the truck and instead of trying to recover them or buy replacements I just stripped off the fabric, cleaned them, and then painted them to match the door panel. Anyway, I went with the second option. After looking at the panel it looked like it was just stapled together where the parts meet. At least I was hoping they wouldn't be glued together or a single piece. So I took the donor panel and started pulling staples. I had already removed the grab handle and the piece that sits behind it. Fortunately once I got the staples out the parts separated pretty readily. So then I pulled the door panel out of the truck and disassembled that panel as well. I used a standard staple gun with 1/2" T50 staples to put everything back together. Then I used some needle nose pliers to bend and compress the staples together. I'm pretty happy with the end result. Little by little I'm getting rid of the mess that the PO left this truck in.
The door panels don't exactly match. Even after I cleaned on the donor panel the color was still pretty different.
These are the marks I intended on getting rid of.
The back of the door panel where the two pieces meet.
The part successfully removed.
Reassembled and reinstalled on the door.
All in all the project probably took about 45 minutes from start to finish. I had the kids helping me so it took a little longer than if I was working alone. Turned out to be a pretty simple fix and I think the end result looks much better than before. I'm sure any of the door panels can be disassembled in the same manner. Maybe this post will help someone else sort out some nitpicky interior issues.
Thanks for looking.
