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E36 Interior panels - Long and rambling ;-)

Hello All, The interior panels (Doors, wall panels by the back seat, headliner, and rear deck) in my E36 1993 325IS are driving me nut! They look like crap. The material (Vinyl?) on the doors looks to be in decent shape, however it is coming off of the backing board AGAIN! (I use "board" in a very Tongue in cheek fashion. That stuff seems barely stronger than cardboard.) :-) I got a quote for replacements from the dealer - @350.00 EACH! I brought the door panels to my local BMW Stealer's highly recommended upholstery shop about

1.5 months ago, and for $200.00 they peeled the vinyl off, and re-glued it. Well it's coming off again, and they won't do anything for me. I took my other BMW (a Black on Black 1999 M3) to a highly recommended upholstery shop (Not the dealer's recommended one) They matched the aftermarket headliner material in my M3 so that he can put similar material into the 325. The material looks like the perforated leather / vinyl you see used on tennis shoes. (Looks like a Band Aid to me) This stuff is THICK and STRONG. It makes a WAY nicer headliner than that foam backed polyester material crap. The only complaint the upholstery shop had was that the stuff is so much heavier that they have to glue the hell out of it to make it stay. Hmmm... More glue.. I'm okay with that. :-) Anyway, the point is that I'm having them re-wrap the door panels, back seat panels, back deck, and headliner all in the same perforated Leather / Vinyl material all for about what it would have cost me to buy two new door panels from my local BMW Stealer.

Hmm, Go Figure. Have any of you had a similar situation with the door materials coming off? It just seems the glue has given up the ghost.

Well that ends my rant for the day. :-)

Thanks for "listening", Wayne K.

Reply to
Wayne K.
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Sounds good Wayne. And it wasn't all that long or rambling... ;-)

The *only* reservation that I would have with your modification is that it may detract from the worth of your car in some small way. But I'm guessing that if you are going through all this trouble to do a top notch repair like this, you probably aren't looking to flip this car soon, so that point is likely moot.

It would be supremely cool if you could get some before and after pics posted somewhere for sharing. I'd really like to see how this comes out, especially the headliner.

Reply to
Malt_Hound

Fred, Thanks for the input. No, I'm not into the whole flipping thing. I'm more of a long term kind of guy. I do have some pictures of the 'before' as I was pissed at the original upholstery shop for their shoddy work. I'll get some nice pictures of the 'after' when I get it back from the shop. I'm putting

17" M3 rims on it too. No, not because I want some Feaux M3. I'm putting them on there because I had them from a previous E36 M3 and the ones that were on my 325 were bent. From what I've seen of the parts they have don so far is that they actually had to cut the vinyl and sew it to wrap it around the map light areas. They said it would have pulled back off like the other vinyl if they had not. I'm okay with it. They did it in a VERY nice fashion. They are also going to embroider the BMW logo and name in dark blue and metallic silver on the inner panels on the doors. For FREE no less!

-Wayne

Reply to
Wayne K.

I've had the same problem on My Euro '94 M3 (with full genuine Alpina kit), my upholster here in Italy has replaced the old thick vinyl with a much thinner one on the panels (it is some kinda fake leather used for clothing), now it stay well sticked to the panels. Ciao Max

"Wayne K." ha scritto nel messaggio news:Mu5Re.3889$Ix4.739@okepread03...

Reply to
IcemanMax

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