Custom door panels

Among the first things the TC I just bought needs, it could really use some TLC on the door panels. The dew wipes look like someone popped their fingers through them, the armrest pads are severely worn, map pockets gone, and the material is faded beyond belief.

Looking at my roomie's door panels he has waiting to go back in, it appears they're just made of cardboard material with a molded metal top that hooks onto the door.

My idea is to get a spare set of panels, remove metal stuff, and trace out a thin peice of balsa board or maybe sheet metal. The only hangup I can see is how I'm going to mount the clip retainers.. any ideas? I figure once I get a rough panel "frame" built, I can recover it with whatever material I can find that looks clean, and swap on a set of Mustang arm rests in place of the TC armrests to eliminate the door pull strap. The Mustang armrests have a handle built into them.

One idea for the door clips involves cutting out some retainers and then brazing them to the actual sheetmetal panel, but that's a crap shoot when it comes to vibration/perfect fitment... Another idea is to secure the cover material to the top of the panel and drill holes through the sheetmetal frame, push the plastic rivets through, then secure the cover material at the bottom before pushing the rivets all the way through...

I figure if I start with a clean panel, I can delete the factory speaker grilles, map pockets, door pull strap, etc and add in some nice door speakers and whatever grills they come with and it can still look clean...

Any ideas?

Oh by the way, if you type in "dew wipe material" into Google and go to the shopping section, they sell it in 2 4' sections for about $37.00 shipped at a few stores. I can't see that being very hard to redo either..

So, youre saying that the dew wipes can be easily replaced by cutting this material to length??

Honestly I don't know how easy it is, I haven't tried it yet. It does look easy to do though. I can't imagine it being too hard to fab up some clips of some sort..

The dew wipes are "stapled" to the inner and outer trim pieces. You will have to remove those staples and then either pop rivit or create your staples with stiff wire to mount the dew wipes on the trim pieces. Not hard to do, but examine the orientation of the old dew wips on the trim very carefully before you start removing them. They have to line up based on the trim placement on the panels.
On the door panels, why not try to strip the fabric off the backing and reuse it. Easier than fabricating your own panels and having to make all those keyholes for the plastic clips.

Interesting any pics or developments yet?

I ordered dew wipes from JC Whitney. They were not too difficult to install. I pop riveted them in. It does take a few minutes to cut them. It was a big improvement.