Vanagon door panels are famous for hot holding up over time. They take a beating, and they also warp quite easily. One Vanagon owner restored his door panels himself. He took the panels off and stripped them down to the masonite. He then traced them onto sheets of 1/8? luan plywood. He wrapped the panels with 1/16th foam and a light cream colored vinyl. Click through to see more.
The original door speakers had been ripped out by the PO, and replaced with grill-less speakers that protruded into the path of the window crank. This gave me one too many scraped up knuckles, I knew I needed a better place for the speakers. A nice large space is available in the lower section of the panel, room for bigger speakers than stock.
I wrapped the plywood with a layer of 1/16th foam and a light cream colored vinyl that matches the westfalia cabinets. The result is a plush panel that is about an 1/8 thicker than the stock panels. This presents a problem to get the handles and cranks to fit, they are designed for the stock panel thickness. The trick I had to do was to remove all of the padding where the handle connects, I also used a router to reduce the thickness around those areas.
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