I bought the seats and door panels off of a 01 Firehawk. I already have the seats installed, and they are nice. I've done a bunch of searching on here with regards to the panel swap. I have the switch, have Shoebox's diagram, and I'm all prepared to do the swap. Then I see a pic from an install run through of the person sawing off the mounting tabs for the Camaro doors. I see that to mount them up you have to screw directly into the resin door panels.

I can't trust this holding on for that long. I had screws holding my x-overs in place and those stripped out and fell within a year. I can imagine that pulling on the door will strip out those three screws in no time, unless I'm super delicate with it. My window motor held up but that's because I used flat washers to distribute the weight over a wide area.

Plus, if something goes wrong, you're pretty much FUBAR since you can't even mount up the old Camaro panels.

Am I just being overly cautious here?

 

I've had my T/a door panels installed for about two years now and I don't have any problems with them. I'm even missing the screw at the back of the armrest. I'll get one in there one day...

 

did you just screw into the resin?

 

You can put a plastic insert into the resin, just drill a small hole and use a snap-in insert, then screw into the insert. A few of my screws came loose, no pun intended, and I used this method and they've held up great. Just go to lowes- these inserts I speak of are located in their hardware dept.

 

I popped out the three square screw holders after I cut off the mounting tabs. Then I drilled holes large enough to mount those holders into the door where the T/A panel mounting points line up. They're made like the mounts for license plates where once you push it in, it flares out to hold tight. I also used some GOOP to hold them, just in case. They've been on for a year or so and haven't come lose. If you just drill right into the resin, those screws will definitely strip out.

 

Those inserts that I described sound exactly like the ones 94z28wp is describing- That is a good idea on adding some adhesive to make sure they stay- if you drill a hole that is small enough for you to have to force the insert in shouldn't have any problems though.

 

Yep, straight into the resin.