The Slow Pursuit of Vintage.

[JamieH]

Great attention to detail, this thread is epic!

Excuse my ignorance, but I'm not sure what I am looking at with the 97 door.. care to explain?

'97s received larger shoulder bolsters on the upper door panels. To accomodate this, Mazda kept the inner door skin flatter by, what appears to me, leaving off a section/layer of material/possible reinforcement of the door. But it also looks to me that the shape of that area is slightly different too.

'97 Top, '96 & earlier Bottom.



So, if you were to try to install '97 door panels into non-'97 doors, they won't fit. Unless you either remove the foam backing in that corner of the door panel or modify it to fit.

With Betty, I just simply do not want to make that minor compromise.

With Rose, when I installed '97 door panels into her, I modified said pieces of foam. I cut out a channel in the foam like so.



I obviously wasn't going to do anything to the door itself to make them fit, that'd be goofy.

But yeah, I like the '97 door panels, I like the larger shoulder bolsters. Some don't, I do.