Marcquito

No affiliation of course, but I thought these were cool. Seem to be rare, no?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/New-Cond-Inter...QQcmdZViewItem

potent951turbo

I am pretty sure they were fairly common, I have seen a lot of 83's with them.

V2Rocket

i see them more on 924s

Marcquito

hrm. well, seems like a nice upgrade for early cars who do not have them.

KuHL 951

If you saw them on an 83 they probably came from a 924. Maybe some of the very early Euro 944's had them but they were not standard in the US. My 83 was #610 and it had the plain ones. The lack of speaker holes is a dead giveaway they are from a 924. I was always looking for a set but they were next to impossible to find in brown. I saw a set at Pick N' Pull in black about 4 years ago on an early 924. I always liked them and have seen several sets go for well over $100 on eBay. Those ones above are for a RHD car also.

GloriaRedStang

There was a set on U.S. eBay a few weeks ago and I wanted em, but the shipping cost to Hawaii was prohibitive. They were not uncommon on 924s, by the way.

Bart

I have a set of brown w/speaker holes but not factory holes. Round instead.

They're for sale. PM if interested.

Po924S

I always wondered if I were to buy panels like this, and recover them in leather, would the PORSCHE still be there? My question is then I guess, is the PORSCHE pushed into the wooden panel? Or when I took off the vinyl, would it be a flat surface on the panel? By the pictures I see, the back of the panel is flat, and dosn't show any indecation of the PORSCHE.

944Sknight

The PORSCHE is indented itself to the vinyl cover. I have one for the right side (passenger) brown
but I painted it black. You can have it for $ 20.00. PM IF you are interestaed.

88BlueTSiQuest

The pressed panel is pretty thick, so the Porsche indention can still be in the panel, and not show up on the back.

Given that there is no padding up top, if you used some good glue and really worked the area, you could cover the panels in leather and still have the PORSCHE show up. It's just like the indentions around the window switches, notice how you don't see those on the backside either.

The only real problem is the panel shape itself. It'll be tough to recover the whole door panel, due to the angles at top. Unless you were to do it in 2 pieces, and use some beading to mimic the factory appearance.

Po924S

Yea, that's what i'm worried about. I'm really gonna have to stretch the leather up at the top. I plan on useing two pieces of leather, and join them with a french seam. Like the factory did, but the factory glued the upper part togather with the lower part. It'll be tough. I'm more worried about the door pull though. It's pretty scary.

KuHL 951

The key to get the new leather to stick and follow every curve is to use the right adhesive and a vacuum bag to suck the material down and hold it. My FIL did this for countless street rod interiors. He made his own bags from 20 mil clear poly and used a vac pump and shop vac fittings.

88BlueTSiQuest

Agreed. There is something about properly sucked down parts. We vacuum bag veneer onto the furniture we make. It's a hell of a task to remove that veneer when/if we have to.

Pulling laminate or veneer off of a part that was never vacuum bagged isn't too tough with some thinner and a little heat, it'll come right off. But a part that was bagged is a serious task.

Most contact glues can take up to 6 hours to really set. So we'll bag parts for about 8-10 hours just to be safe. We also aim for a minimum of 20in. of vacuum.

I've been wanting a vacuum pump myself, but for a good used one you can spend up to $350. I've heard of using old refrigerator compressors, but I haven't explored that avenue yet.