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I understand that you have to drill a hole in the door panel and screw into the fiberglass tab inside the door. My concern/question is: How do you screw a screw into the fiberglass tab without stripping it out, and what type screw do you use. My door panel is red and a black head screw would look out of place.
Hello, I would like to offer a door panel fix that worked well for my floppy C4 door panels. As we all know by now the major issue is that GM did not use any sort of fastener to mount the upper part of the panel to the door. Fixing the broken ribs inside of your doors is a solution to repair the ribs ONLY but does not change the over all issue of the lack of fasteners to secure the panel to the door. In GM's infinite wisdom of design, just having the panel itself slide over the door, hang in position and fasten by 4 minuscule screws and 5 or 6 plastic fasteners is to say the least an embarrassment in engineering. Anyway, back to our point and onto the remedy.
1. Buy some aluminum stock 1/16" x 1.5" x 48" and 1/16"x 1" x 48" from your local hardware store. You will need both sizes as the front area of the door sill is narrower than the rear of the door sill.
2. Buy 3/16" X 1/8" rivets and a rivet gun along with an 1/8" drill bit.
3. Buy very robust velcro tape, I believe it's called "Heavy Duty Velcro" "believe me this stuff will hang a man from the ceiling", this is the stuff you want.
4. Measure the distance of each rib and fabricate little shelves over them. There are only enough ribs for three shelves. (Note) your passenger side door will only take two shelves as there is hump in the center.
5. Use a metal stock bender to bend appropriately.
6. Make sure you mark your holes with a sharpie before your drill. It's easier to make holes in the aluminum first. DO NOT attempt to drill holes the aluminum with the shelves on the door panel. Then drill holes using your existing holes as guide for drilling into the plastic.
7. After drilling holes in the aluminum and plastic, it is now time to rivet. The rivets can be a challenge to insert (DO NOT hammer your rivets in with a hammer, you will break the ribs).
8. Cut velcro appropriately to size and attach. Now mate the other side of velcro to the shelves as well as so. The purpose of this is to properly align the velcro to the door during mockup.
9. After Mockup make sure both male and female sides of velcro are a fixed securely to the surfaces.
10. Hang the panels and align them properly on the door. Side note. Loosely hang the door panel on the door, close the door and apply force to the top of the panel with the DOOR CLOSED to mate the velcro together. Do not apply force to an open door. Remove the door panel and make sure all velcro is secured to the door and panel. Now Assemble. You will apply force again to the top of the door panel to insure that the panel has mated itself to the velcro on the door.
11. Finish assembly and your door panel is now mated to the door and you will no longer have floppy door panels. This is an inexpensive way to secure your panels without hacking up your precious C4 Corvette.
12. If you really want go overboard you can make shelves for the vertical ribs and a fix them to your door as well but you will need to cut your factory sound deadening material to make room for the shelves. I wanted to keep my car very original as it's a 25,000 mile show piece.
Hope this helps. You now have panels that are secure but still can be removed in the future if need be.
Last edited by TopFuelVette; 01-04-2017 at 06:10 PM.
08-05-2014, 02:46 PM
