https://www.midtownlumber.com/what-i...y%20compressed).

 

Peter, in the US, they call that wood product "particle board".
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new door cards are now awaiting extradition from the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland).

 

update...

door cards received. boards are similar to Masonite, but quite a bit softer, but adequate.

i've decided to re-install the upholstery myself as it's in excellent condition, despite the poor condition of the card it is/was mounted to. left side is mostly now done and a test fit has proven satisfactory with armrest and upholstery tacked on here and there and a few clips holding it to the door. i'll tack everything down permanently tomorrow, and be adding some sound deadening inside window area too to help cut down on the "oil canning" sound when closing the door.

 

the clips used to fasten the door card to the door are a REAL PITA TO FIT!!!! i spent about half a day (and fingers will take a couple more to recuperate) to fit three-quarters of the clips on the door card to the door. i think i will approach the opposite side front door differently....

i'll fit the naked door card (i.e no upholstery) with all the clips in place to the door and carefully mark around their edges. then CAREFULLY remove the card leaving the clips in the card. and only then CAREFULLY, so as not to disturb the clips even though i've marked their positions, re-attach the upholstery. with the possibly futile purpose of facilitating the fitment of the door card with upholstery attached back on to the door.

the problem is that the clips must be PERFECTLY centered on the hole into which they must fit, or otherwise they s\imply won';t seat themselves. when centered they wlll push right in with hand pressure alone, no heel of the hand is necessary. and forcing them? you don't want to go there. it's a bad place.

BTW, the sound deadening material worked well and was not difficult to install. i put about 10-12 individual pieces in the door. some up against the inside of the outside and some up against the inside of the inside. the "oil canning" sound has been eliminated. yeah!

 

No easy way to refit those clips. I spent ages peering in through the gap between the door and the door card with a torch in broad daylight lining each clip up with the holes. A pair of long nose pliers helped a little.
With the sound deadening have you used material that will not absorb water. The original sound deadening material was a felt type material pad which retained water. In the rear doors especially the pad sat off centre of the door right at the point that water would drip out of the glass track once the door rubber seals started to let water in. Result was the rear doors would rust from the inside out and you end up with holes in the door. See photos of my S Type doors of work done prior to me buying and restoring.
The small square patch you can see if where some numpty cut out the rust and welded in a repair patch. The brown area is the distortion in the door that he caused when welding the patch in as the metal cooled and shrank. Took me ages to get this flat again.

 

i began work on the second front door. the right side passenger door.

i decided that there HAD to be a better way to install the new door card once i had the upholstery on it. so i decided to install the door card without the upholstery on it, just to see how difficult THAT would be.

first off, i tried to line up the holes in the door card (including the ones for the window handle and the door handle) with the holes in the metal door. ...they don't line up as i initially thought they would. but i persevered and eventually got a few clips in here and there after much frustration it must be said...almost as bad as with the upholstery on! until...

i realized that the holes in the door card and the holes in the metal door are not supposed to match up. in fact, the clips won't work properly if they DO match up. as the clips will have nothing to clip to because for the pointy end to fit into the metal door the squeezing surfaces will be in the hole.

it took me a while to realize this but once i got that through my thick head, it took only a few minutes to install all the clips, by hand, and just pushing them into and then home on the door card, and then snapping the clips into the metal door, such that the naked door card was firmly attached to the door and i could finally see the method to the madness. once i saw the pattern was uniform and repeating i could add three or four clips on the door card at once and then just push them in, one after the other, boom!, boom!, boom!. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!! (see pics, it should be clear as to what there were doing at the factory).

BTW, when they are installed like this, the pointy end that goes into the hole in the metal door, is about half an inch away from the edge of the hole in the door card. ...completely out of sight!







black goo and what looks like rust is old contact cement, old door card, and some dried up ancient tar-like substance.

i'll be taking this door card off again, of course, to transfer the upholstery in the next couple of days, and hopefully have saved myself a major headache when installing it. i'll be careful not to dislodge the clips while working on the upholstery refit, but i now know the pattern and have experienced the ease with which the clips can be aligned properly to just snap in. if i accidently knock one or two of the clips out of alignment i won't be too concerned as i know where they are supposed to be, not necessarily from the pics, but from the uniform pattern that was made clear once the naked door card was installed.

...should be all downhill from here (duck!).

 

I knew the holes were not aligned and I knew the clips could be rotated but thanks for letting us know there is a pattern and for the photos. Three years too late but what the hell nice to know.

On the S Type the front door cards have a Map pocket. Not sure if the Mk2 has the same set up. Problem with it is the elastic stretches and the pocket hangs open and anything you put in to it can either fall out the sides or out the bottom behind the door card. The original design was just a piece of Vinyl glued to the inside of the door which eventually curls up and falls off. Anything you put in the pocket falls into the inside of the door never to be seen again. When I rebuilt mine I replaced the elastic but also improved it by adding a backing board made of MDF and added to the sides with extra material so nothing could fall out. Not that I use them but but it makes them look so much better when you do open them and look inside.


MDF backing board screwed to the inside of the door with the new elastic going through the board.


Small fillets that I added to the sides to stop things sliding sideways out of the pocket.


Finished door car waiting for the wood to be fitted.

 

the mk2 has pretty much the same map pocket...shape is a bit different is all. the part of the pouch for the maps that's attached to the metal door on my car was glued on with what looks like contact cement, and so i reattached mine (i had removed it to install some sound insulation on the inside of the metal door to reduce the "oil canning" effect when closing) with the same stuff. my probably forty year-old "elastic" strips were good enough for my purposes, which are nothing(!) and so just re-stapled them to the new door card.

good idea you had to add some integrity to the part of the pocket that prevents things from falling down into the abyss, ha. being the minimalist (aka lazy) person i am, i would have probably just stapled the whole map pocket closed and been done with it...after all, who uses maps anymore, eh? IMO, they're just a bit of a bother...

 

finally finished the passenger door card backing replacement today. it's been a journey...

this time, i installed a vapor barrier and added the three spring clips that hold the door card to the metal door. they are positioned at a point just above the armrest. i didn't even know they existed when working on the driver's side door (see pics of the three empty holes just to the rear of the door handle in post #27) and so didn't install them, but are necessary to create rigidity in and around the armrest. otherwise, when pulling on the armrest or even laying one's arm on it there is precious little in that area to hold the door card backing to the metal door.

i also installed the thin foam cushioning material between the card and the upholstery as it had completely disintegrated.

now that i know more about the process, i think i'll redo the drivers side door, someday, and add a vapor barrier, and the three clips above the armrest. the foam cushioning material was okay, but i discovered that the top of the armrest has zero padding, so i'll have to address that too.

 

A nice mod (for those who tolerate them) might be to add some screws to hold the armrest to the steel of the door and a slot in the top. Then, it's more solid and useful for closing the door.

These days, the map pocket is now a tablet or phone pocket.