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Door Card Material
- Thread starter puchak
- Start date
More importantly is how it happened. Do you have a bad window seal that allowed water into the access of the door card or are you missing the plastic vapor barrier? While you are there clean off the old grease and apply new on all moving parts and be sure the drain holes are clear at the bottom.
It is a white pink piece of plastic, similar to Tyvek for new construction on houses that if you look closely at the door from outer edge, a 3-5mm residue of contact cement exists where it was attached. Water enters from the glass seals over time and theoretically exits out the weep holes. If the moisture stays too long, say the drain holes are plugged- then you get rust. But mostly the moisture affects the door card, it warps or cracks in places. If your vapor barrier is gone, someone removed the card to do something, broken regulator, bad switch or locking mechanics, check strap RR or clean/lube, etc. Anytime you have the card off one should clean weep holes, lube regulator and or lube door check strap. The barrier isn't magic, just thin mil plastic. You can get a measured cut of butcher block paper and rough it out for size as a template and make your own vapor barrier out of some heavy plastic sheet. Perhaps others will chime in as to what they used but this will help keep the door card which is a version of compressed cardboard-like material. Gerryvz did some how-to on check strap or driver windows, and IIRC there may be some commentary and pictures regarding the vapor barrier for visual context.
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The vapor barrier is an oft-misunderstood piece of plastic that serves an important function, as nocfn explained above. People tend to either not re-install it after removing, or not seal it to the metal door frame.
First photo below is an example from my old wagon, the plastic was damaged and barely attached at all.
Second photo shows a fresh piece of plastic cut to fit, and glued to the door with rubber cement to seal properly.
First photo below is an example from my old wagon, the plastic was damaged and barely attached at all.
Second photo shows a fresh piece of plastic cut to fit, and glued to the door with rubber cement to seal properly.
And a hint/tip. Get a can of 3m Adhesive remover. Used often in my garage, it will soften existing glue/adhesives such as for the trunk seal, activation of the adhesive on the plastic and on the door for bonding. I even used it to soften tar and bugs on other painted surfaces. Note that install instructions for non-pressed fit seals are to use the product to loosen existing adhesive for seal removal. While I chose to remove the adhesive when replacing the trunk seal on my W126, it isn't required. Merely allow the properties of the remover to work - softening the tack of the adhesive and as it evaporates after a few minutes, the seal is adheres to the metal of the channel. It will not harm painted surfaces, unless you use brute force roughly and repetitively rubbing the area then you could dull the clear coat. I suspect anyone reading this knows but use common sense, it never goes NLA 
