With over 30 years of wear and tear the van was nowhere near perfect. The previous owners were mechanics and had used it as a parts hauling van. The middle seat had been taken out for extra storage space. The carpet on the floor was ripped up and all full of dirt, grease and who knows what. Most of the door panels had rips in the vinyl, moderate water damage and the ash trays were filled with cigarette butts.
I had a few ideas of how I wanted to fix up the inside that I had found on Instagram and by surfing the web. The removal of the old door panels was quite easy. About 50 percent of the fasteners were either loose, missing or broken. Once they were removed I used the old panels as a template for the new ones.
For the new panels I purchased 2 4×8 sheets of 1/4 inch plywood from Home Depot. Once the panel templates were traced I cut them using a jig saw as close to the lines as possible. With a palm sander I smoothed out the edges and straightened out the cuts.
With new panel fasteners on the way, new holes were drilled to match the old fastener holes. Before I hung the new panels I used a natural finish stain to bring out the grain of the wood and sealed/water proofed them with a marine spar varnish.
Vanagon Nomad 