MTFCA Forum

Hello.
I am currently restoring the front door of my '16 Touring. I had to partially remove nails from inner coverage to reach the innermost screws of door latch. The door didn't reliably lock so I wanted to repair the lock mechanism. This worked fine, the lock is now as good as new, the spiral spring was over-bent. Reason, the latch has an edge closer to the spring, pushing the spring up ways too much. I finally cut away this edge, now the spring can work as it should. I finally bent the brass spring back to its former shape, replaced the grinded off rivet heads by a M5 bolt going through the entire lock, repainted and greased everything with chain grease spray (as used on motorcycle chains, it is very sticky)...

I think the lock is well done now.


Then I thought it will be good to check the inner door cover and also the condition of door metal. The door had an oily and decent sulky smell from inside, so I pulled all nails and tacks and removed the inner cover. I decided to give it a thick paint of "hammerite" paint to stop further corrosion. The wood was also very naked, I applied some paint, too.

... now the door is completely protected on its inner side against rust and humidity.

Now I get to the inner cover:
This makes me a bit nervous. After pulling all nails I found out that the door was covered twice from inner side. The first layer (in next picture on the right) is cardboard, coated with cloth on its front side (also glued 1" around all borders), and finally painted black. The left side inner cover of my Lizzy is of same material and not looking better. You can see all the damages, it is also very warped. I guess this was the reason for another layer...
On top of this cardboard another cover was applied (in next picture on the left), held in place by many round head nails. This is only some sort of cloth, finally painted black from front side, with a little border and a pocket sewed on. All the dark spots on back side come from black paint applied to the front (has soaked through the cloth), this is no mildew, but it smells musty.


My plan is - and here I please for some suggestions:
The cardboard is for trash, that is clear. It is warped and has holes kicked in, this cannot be fixed. But I want to keep the front layer (cloth with pocket), it looks very old (perhaps it is original).
So I will take a sheet of 1.5 mm (~ 1/16") birch-plywood as used in model airplanes as replacement for the cardboard. This plywood has same thickness as the old cardboard but it is really flat, can be easily bent, and is lots stronger against damages. I will cut it into the exact shape of the cloth cover (of course I will straighten its shape and not follow every arch the cloth cover has.
Then I will soak it in parquet paint to make it resistant against humidity. I say soak because I will apply lots of paint.
Because the front textile is very fragile along its borders, I will glue it on whole surface to the painted plywood. I will use PU based transparent glue applied by a fine toothed spatula. This way the textile does not have to absorb forces any more, this will be done from now on by the plywood.
Finally I will glue a synthetic leather border around both (textile and plywood). It is very thin and black, it fits well to the "shabby black" of the textile.

After this the new inner cover is finished and I will nail it to the door with similar round headed nails (ø1/2" x 2/3" long).

The new nails have a darker matte brass (or bronze) surface, not this shiny bright brass-yellow. As the entire car was painted over at least twice, the old nails are black. How was this in original? My Lizzy is a brass+black model ('16). Shall I keep the nails in bronze, or paint them black?

Nice work on your door. Here is a page taken from a Western Auto Supply Co. catalog, "1928 Auto Owners Supply Book". Accessory door pocket, and upholstery nails, as available in the day. I suspect what you refer to as some kind of cloth is 100 + year old top material or upholstery material, often referred to as artificial leather. I believe all years of Model T upholstery round head tacks were black.

Hello, Humblej.

Thank you so much for this picture. This is exactly what I have. The door pocket material indeed has a surface with artificial leather -- where it is not too shabby. The tacks I will use are bought at amazon. Here is the link...
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B094NY ... UTF8&psc=1

Diameter and length is approximately identical, you can also see the dark-bronze color they have.
So I will use this nails and paint them black afterwards with a very fine brush. This is better than painting them first, the paint would be damaged by the hammer.

It is wonderful to hear that this door pocket I have is 100+ years old. This is a motivation to keep it. But - as I mentioned earlier - I will use this thin plywood - it is stronger.


Do you have any idea on how to repair the inner body cover on left side (driver side)?
It is also warped, very similar to the cardboard on front door (see picture above, the right one) , it also has two huge humps towards body metal (above and below the horizontal rib on half height). In addition there is a 2-3" big hole struck into the material by the upper end of the handbrake lever.
It does not look very beautiful.
I already welded a limit stop to the "ratchet bow" of the handbrake lever, so it will not be able to hit the cover again, but the damage is already done.

For repair I thought about sliding in a little piece of 10-12 mm (~1/2") plywood) after applying a lot of glue to it. This way I can pull the cardboard back to the front and press it flat by another plywood from outside and a wood screw in the center. When the glue has hardened, I remove the screw and outer plywood. The glued-in plywood stays there and stabilizes the cardboard fragments around the damage, it also acts as base for some 2K-filler. When decently pressing some sanding paper onto the half-hardened filler, it should give some texture (so I hope). Then a thin layer of black matte paint should make the hole almost invisible, it is not directly in field of view.

What do you think?

Rainer.

Sorry, no experience repairing damaged cardboard. Others may know.

On my Studebaker I am restoring I used an asphalt felt material for backing as the cardboard was all ratty and torn from moisture. It had the same stiffness and is water proof.

The Western Auto door pocket accessory would be a nice item to repro. I'd like to have a left and right one.