Aren't these inserts made of kangaroo leather? Has anyone tried reupholstering in the original material?

 

My experience resurfacing the door inserts.


First, have on the of the metal trim pry bars with a curve to help remove the inserted piece from the door panel.

Second, The material you get HAS TO BE FLEXIBLE. My mistake was not reading this thread closely. It is descrieed that the material needs to be flexible but I did not take too much stock in it.

If you are at the fabric store and you think it is flexible, it's not. When you truly find flexible you will know it. The material I finally found was a velvet with a felt backing.

Sand down the foam backing that will remain when you take the old material off.

Don't try and glue it down all at once. Do one side with just the contours first then the other and then the top section and then go back to the lower section. You need parts of the material to be glued down to be able to pull the wrinkles out.

Also, go to a salvage yard and get one of the inserts first. It takes 2-3 times before you get the outcome that looks good.

Inserting the piece back into the door panel is very difficult.

I do not recommend this job to someone without patience. Best to clean your existing door panels. This job is no fun at all.

 

I removed mine, peeled off the Alcantara and found that the original surface is quite similar to the Alcantara, so I just gave it a coat of black trim paint and reinstalled. It looks great.

 

A big thank you to emncfi for this write-up. It gave me everything I needed to tackle this job myself.

A few years back I redid the ceiling using some stretchy fabric I picked up while visiting Kauai. Yesterday morning I found the left over fabric and a near full can of 3M headliner spray glue, and I thought matching door inserts would look nice, so, after about 8 hours of work, I'm very happy with the results. Since I had the doors apart, I also added lots of sound-deading mats to the interior door panels and greased the window regulators before reinstalling the door cards. I left the original Alacantara in place because the new material is thin and the Alacantara acts like a padding underneath.

Results:



The ceiling I did a few years back:

 

Your seats should be upholstered in wicker.