New door panels for a Pacer are very hard to find. After 34+ years, most of them are either cracked or missing chunks. My door panels have both! This car sat outside all of it's life in Texas, and these door panels are a mess. Fortunately for me, repairing junk like this is what I like to do best. My family still gives me a hard time about when I was about 8 years old, and I tried to repair on of those blue plastic boats with masking tape. Needless to say, it sank, with me in it! However, here I am 41 years later basically doing the same thing, only with much better results!
Here is what the door panel looked like when I started. Basically, it was broken in two, with the big chunk busted out in the middle, and the end piece completely missing.
The next picture shows how I used duct tape to hold the pieces together (thanks blue boat!) before I fiberglass on the backside. I have done this before on Pacer door panels, and you get excellent results if you remember to sand and clean thoroughly before applying the resin. I recommend carb cleaner as the final cleaner...it is guaranteed to remove the shine on the plastic!
After several days of taping and 'glassing, here is where we are now. It is not pretty yet, but it is solid.
Interesting how the broken chunk out of the middle has a different color...must have been out of the sun. You can also see how I have rebuilt the broken edge pieces on the bottom. I used modeling clay to make a mold from an unbroken section, and simply put a couple of pieces of fiberglass over the mold and the broken spot. Even has the original texture on it! I am currently using the door panel from another pacer to make a mold for the big chunk missing out of the upper left. I do not expect the repair to be invisible, but I do expect to have a functional door panel that will look fine for a driver. Cheap too! Will keep you posted after more progress is made.
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