1998 V70XC Door Vinyl Removal and Refit Part 2

[Ludermilch]

This as part two of my breakdown on how I refit my door panels. The first part is located here https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/forums ... =1&t=72918

To continue getting from here

Before

To here

After

You now have to remove the foam that was "holding" the vinyl to the panel. I found the best way was to use acetone. Got a gallon and used almost all of it. It involves soaking the foam with the acetone and waiting just moments before taking a stiff brush and scrubbing away. Acetone evaporates quickly. Don't use a scraper, or anything sharp because you don't want to mark the panel.

Acetone

Just keep soaking and scrubbing with the brush until most of the foam is gone.

Scrubbing

To remove the rest of the finer foam residue use a 3M scrubbing pad. Pay attention to the outside edge too.

3M scrubber

Take time to lightly sand the surface to get the fibers that are pulled up from scrubbing. Dry the panel over night or in the sun before going further. You should have a nice clean surface to work with now.

Clean panel

From here you can go several routes. Re-Vinyl, Cloth, Leather, Shag carpet. Its your preference. Mine was to paint it a similar color to the grey plastic trim interior. I really like grey. I covered the panel areas I did not want to paint. Coated it in primer, sanded, another layer of primer and then two coats of grey fleck paint.

Painting

Two coats of clear coat and let dry for a few hours.

Clear Coat

Using this method of restoration/refit I ran into a problem I did not plan on. The original vinyl padding was about 1/4 inch thick. When reassembled there was a space between the front half and the back half. Not ideal because air, road noise and light came through. My solution was "D" foam rubber strips. Like this https://www.amazon.com/Dealglad%C2%AE-Se ... ndow+black
I bought mine at Home Depot.

This part is one you must take great care in doing right. I started the strip at the center of the rear portion closest to the door latch. This way I would not see a seam while sitting in the car.

D Foam

Make sure your hands are clean, the panel surface is clean and that you press the D foam to the panel firmly. Follow the contour of the panel, its not a straight line. Don't get oil from your fingers on the surface or the adhesive will release months later.

Adding the foam

Once you have wrapped the foam all the way around where the vinyl used to be make sure you go back and press the D Foam onto the panel, checking fit and finish.

Checking the foam

Now reattach the speaker grill. # 10 washers and # 10 3/8" screws were used. I drilled out the old plastic welds on the back of the speaker grill. Don't drill completely through. Make sure you use a bit that is close to the same size as the screw because the plastic is brittle and will split if the screw has to dig in too much. Hand tighten only.

Reattach the grill

Now to test fit and check for gaps.

Check fit

The hardest part is gluing it all back together. I used contact cement because it has high temperature resistance, bonds most anything, and can dry without exposure to air. There may be better products out there so use what you feel will work best(Not Liquid Nails).

Do a dry run of putting it all back together to get a feel for what needs to be done. Contact cement is not easy, if not impossible, to reset. Notice where the parts touch and where the green factory glue is. Once you are comfortable, put together the front half and back half first. Apply glue to the green areas and wait for the cement to set. Put the parts together and clamp firmly. This process is many minutes of gluing and waiting. I did mine in cold March and the glue took longer to dry, outside.

Laying it out

Clamping Back Panel

CLAMPING FRONT PANEL

The area hardest to get glued was the seam below the door handle. Lots of creative clamping there.

Clamping Creativeness

Glue and clamp the Black door panel clips.

Gluing clip holders

Without the foam+vinyl adding 1/4" to the door, the plastic door handle will seat itself lower in the panel and you will have trial and error here. Liberal amounts of glue used here.

Door Handle Gluing

A finished product took a day for each panel. Mostly due to the cold weather.

Whole rear panel

Rear Panel Close

This was a trial and error project and improvements can be made.

Panel in car

I am happy, I have a place for my elbow now!

Place for my elbow.

Thanks for reading. After the third panel I felt like an expert. Hope someone takes this idea and improves on it. Maybe some 98-00 owners will find this useful.

[Ozark Lee]

Outstanding!

...Lee

[j-dawg]

You can also rivet those clips back in place. They were glued in from the factory and tend to fall out, but they're strong enough that rivets won't crack them.

[cn90]

Holy smoke, nice.
I have lived with this "trim peeling" for 15 years lol...

[FLXC90]

Looks good! You could color match exterior paint, add carbon fiber wrap, or whatever. New trend for P80 interiors!

[bmdubya1198]

Very nice! Good solution!

[SonicAdventure]

Great post and thanks for taking all the great photos.

I would love to do this someday when I get some of the more essentials repairs done on my car.

A couple of questions: what was the exact brand of glue you used, and did you do any surface prep to the fiberboard prior to gluing? Also, what type of primer did you use on the exposed fiberboard prior to painting? Do you think this process could be enhanced by brushing a coating of resin compound to the exposed fiber prior to primer and sanding?

lastly, having worked with this fiber, do you think it would be possible to primer and paint the headliner substrate in a similar manner or is that a totally different material?

Thanks

[SonicAdventure]

I know this is an older post, but would this technique work on the headliner substrate?

I have been riding around with a cloth-less headliner for 6 months. I'm not going to pay to have it re-done and a non-sunroof headliner for a wagon it hard to locate. Plus, it's just going to fall down again.

I am trying to figure out the cheapest and most utilitarian alternative to wrap this up. Hate looking at this ugly foam. Thanks.

[wolvengang42]

With deep - deep respect for the unbelievably detailed tutorial in this thread we like to announce that we are working on a sturdy but simple and inexpensive repairkit called PANELPADS to solve this problem WITHOUT having to remove the panels of your car. We found the working principle already, still working on the finishing touch, and we will ship overseas. You can get more information on:

http://www.wolvengang.com/#!commitment-english/oj5uu

Or follow this project on Twitter #panelpads.

By the way, this is no commercial, we are just a bunch of enthusiasts driving 3 Classics in our innovation business network. For that reason we thought we had to be the ones to take the lead in this nasty issue.

ATTENTION! Do NOT try to glue the vinyl back on the panel in whatever way unless you are an absolute upholstery professional! It will do more harm than it will help. Replacement with 'R' panels is another option of course, if you can find them.

[wolvengang42]

Hello V70 Classic owners! We have finally launched our Panelpads kit for repairing loosening vinyl coming off from the door panels of the Volvo V70 - S70 - V70 XC Classic (1996 - 2000). Here you'll find all the information you need, Panelpads now has its own subdomain:

www.wolvengang.com/panelpads.

And our production partner ships worldwide .