Door panel fitment

So its getting close to Erin's gtg and im trying to wrap up a few things I ignored on my door previously. Mostly when I did my mlv/ccf layer, I put them on backwards. So my solution was to just swap tge driver and passenger side barriers so thr ccf would be against the door and the mlv would be facing in, like Don at sds recomends.

Low and behold my driver side door wont go back on. I think its because I remounted my grill pods more securely using rivets. I believe this pulled the door panel out of shape slightly. Well I walked away once in frustration then it was no better a couple hours later. By the end of the battle I had 6 broken panel clips, I need a new electric window plug on the wiring harness, and the corner of my panel is cracked. Luckily I didnt damage any of my audio install. I dont know what to do. The little plastic panel clips just aren't strong enough to hold everything in place. I even removed the weather stripping and mlv/ccf layer, and ut was still about 1/4" from snapoinh right in. Every time one side would snap in the othet side would snap out. I all but destroyed my drivers side door panel. Im not even sure I got any improvement from the wotk I did which means I just took 10 steps back for nothing!

At wgat point have yall said fuck it and just run screws into the door around the edge of the panel? Is there a better way to secure the panel without having to run screws in the door or fuck with those shitty little plastic clips?

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After you take out a standard vapor barrier and shove a bunch of shit in there that was not designed to go in.. it's tight... This was exasperated by the fact in my car that the door card actually protrudes into the inner door skin plane.

So what did you do?

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Just an idea...take the door panel back off, rub chalk on all of the protruding parts, put it back on and let the chalk transfer to the MLV so you will see where it's binding up.

Not a bad idea.

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I did what Al suggested. Cut the CCF off of that area, heated the mlv and pushed it in, held it till it cooled. the re-engineered that area somehow, possibly putting the CCF on the door card? Can't remember, but I do remember it sucked. Did not like that part of the install.

Will mlv mold pretty good with a heat gun?

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I'm always on concrete with a flashlight :( You may also have the option of trimming back of door panel.

Did that already.

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If you want to try some different push pins, these hold like crazy. When you get them to pop out, it sounds like you broke something. http://www.clipsandfasteners.com/Chr...A_p/a21601.htm

edit: if those don't fit the holes in your doors, there are quite a few more 2 piece designs on that site.

Replying here just in case anyone stumbles upon this some day.
My door card didn't fit back on after I added MLV and CCF. I took a few approaches.
1. Rubbed door card with colored chalk to see where it was causing issues on the MLV. - I cut down pieces of plastic on the door card that were the culprits - this got me 90% of the way there.
2. Heat gun - you have to be super careful with this one. It's worth testing it first to see how your plastic reacts. You can warm the plastic until its in a somewhat moldable state, but it won't neccesarily alter the appearance of the plastic. It takes a lot of patience and testing but I was able to bend/alter a few cupholders that were the main culprits of my doors not going back on. You can't really tell the difference by looking at it. I've turned Inny's into Outies to accomodate larger speakers or deeper speaker mounting brackets. It beat the sh** out of making a custom door panel.
3. Door clips! Dude ... this one was a game changer. I found that on my Honda, they make very similar yet slightly different door clips. Through NWCLIPS.com I was able to use their specs and find some door clips that were the exact same size, yet were a tiny bit wider in the middle of the clip - which thus gave them much better fastening power. I ended up changing out all of my door clips to these and essentially when I push them in, they don't come out. When I had to take my door back off, half of them broke off, the other half popped right out as normal (but with a little extra torque). Since they were around 25-40 cents each ... WELL WORTH IT!

definitely do the chalk thing and if it's a gap on the side of the panel that is nearest the car horizontally and you can live with the slight gap being there and the door still closes right then run down to the autoparts store with your clips and see if they have a type that is slightly longer and still fits the hole and the retainer on the panel. you can always fill that inside gap with ccf or something since you can't see it unless you stick your head in the door jam lol. I had to do this when I had my maxima. I'll probably have to do this to fit my 6x9s in front doors on my Kia also.