Corvair Forum

Hi everyone, I pulled my drivers interior door panel off in order to be able to hammer my door stop wedge back in to place. My car is a 64 convertible, and I noticed that those wedges on the driver's side were far apart. Looking closer at it the driver's door was dented in at where the wedge screws in. I think possibly the driver door which is not originally from my car was from one that was in a crash and was pushed back, denting the wedge area in.

Anyway, the door panel has those "nails" welded into the perimeter to hold it into the plastic retainers in the door. On mine most of those were missing and the door panel was only holding by three pins. I am working on a home spun repair I'll share, and hopefully it works .

So I installed the panel today after letting the silicone dry. It is an improvement but not a total silver bullet solution. The door panel is holding by more pins than previously, but there are a few that did not want to stay in their plastic retainers. Also the panel is a bit warped at the bottom, so that makes getting things to go in tricky as well. I'll call this a partial success, but worth trying and better than nothing.

Clarks sells the entire nail strip . But they can be a pain to put on

Clarks used to sell the individual nails mounted on a piece of metal , so you could replace just the nails that were broken . Not to bad to install these , and could probably be installed without removing part of the original strip

https://mikescorvairparts.com/product/c ... 60-64-new/

I think Clarks has discontinued the single nail , but this fellow has them

For the '62 Monza sedan I'm restoring, I went a different way. All of the door panels were totally shot, so I made new backer panels and bought marine vinyl to cover them.

I was going to use some stainless steel ring shank nails for fastening vapor barriers to siding, but they were too big in diameter. Luckily, I found two local suppliers that sell silicon bronze boat nails (ring shank) that are the right diameter and just a little too long, for only $5-6 for 55 of them. Had to cut them to length with bolt cutters and grind the ends on a bench grinder, but my time is cheap, I like making things, and unlike the original nails, they will never rust.

Will post photos of the end results when I get the car done.