Bob,
Masonite is probably the brown board that you referred to. However, it comes
in several grades. Tempered which has the dark brown, shiny finish on one or
both sides, and untempered, which is a lighter shade and has one side smooth
and one side rough, but neither side is as hard as the tempered. The
original panels in my car appeared to be made out of untempered Masonite.
My brother and I used the untempered Masonite to build my door panels and
rear quarter panels, as my originals were broken in several places and very
warped. (New Masonite of course, will also break and warp over time
especially if allowed to get wet.) My brother used the old panels as
patterns to cut out the new ones with a table saw for the straight cuts and
a saber saw for the curved cuts.
We replaced the door pockets with new ones from Moss, I believe. I used
polyester "quilt" batting with a small amount of loft. As I wanted to
approximate the original panels as close as possible. In retrospect, I wish
I would have used cotton batting instead of the polyester, although the only
complaint I had was how the polyester reacted to having a drill run through
it. It would bind on the drill bit. I am not sure if the cotton would have
done that.
One thing we did was to use brush on contact cement. We used the "heavy
duty" 3M 90 spray-on the seat pans and the dash and had terrible luck, it
would lift and curl as soon as it got hot from the sun. I redid most of the
edges with the brush on contact cement with much better results.
On the door panels we first drilled out the mounting holes for the door
pockets and then countersink the holes for 4x40 x 3/4 inch long, flat head
Phillips screws. I put the screws through the holes, used a bit of tape to
smooth the screw head, and used Kep nuts with the built in lock washers and
fairly large flats on the rear of the panel, to keep the screws from falling
out during the assembly of the panels. I then installed the batting with 3m
spray-on cement, (just to hold it until the vinyl was installed), then
installed the vinyl with brush on cement on the back of the panel. I next
cut slits for the door pockets and pulled the vinyl tight. After all of the
panels were covered in vinyl, including the rear quarter panels, I took them
to a friendly upholsterer, who was willing to have his helper use their
stapler to staple all of the glued flaps on the inside surface. You'll
remember that the original panels were stapled with 1/8 inch staples but I
was unable to find any 1/8 inch staples that could be used in my Arrow
stapler. I also knew that the glue would not hold for very long. Staples
were the answer, so I asked my upholsterer if he would help. He only charged
me $20.00! If I had it to do over, my brother and I should have purchased a
staple gun. It would have cost more but we would have a "neat" tool! After
the panels were stapled, including the vinyl piping, I removed the nuts and
washers, the spray-on cement and tape held the screws in the panels,
carefully installed the door pockets and reinstalled the washers and Keps,
tightened all of the Keps and admired our work.
We used new chrome trim screws and cup washers from TRF. My interior looks
so close to original, I can hardly believe it.
As always YMMV and NFI in 3M, etc!
Jim Bauder
'58 TR3
Palo Alto, CA
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