Door Trim Repair

[SuspiciousPizza]

Coming home from work this weekend I smoked a deer. Luckily my headlight took the brunt of the impact but the deer spun around and caved in my driver side door. 

It ripped off some of the side protectors and damaged the protector on my door. I'm talking about the 2.5" wide black plastic pieces.

Are these pieces held on with plastic clips/rivets or maybe a double sided tape? How would one remove them?

I'll be installing a "new" door in the coming weeks and once I get my hood straightened out I'll be back on the road.

Next summer I'll get my door fixed and a buddy and I are going to repaint the car. I also will be welding a bull bar from chrome moly tubing so I don't have to worry about deer as much in the future.

Thanks :]

[el_freddo]

Those strips are held on with plastic clips. Best way to remove them is via the inside of the door by squeezing the tabs closed to let them slide out the hole. 

You don’t need a chime moly bullbar - that will fold something more substantial in the engine bay. What you want is a bullbar that will bend a bit as it absorbs the energy of the animal - thus saving other factory parts on the car that are harder to come by. 

Nothing is certain pin this though. Maybe a full exo-cage will do the trick, but where do you draw the line?

[SuspiciousPizza]

I've been looking at the rally Leones and their brush guards and I was thinking something inspired by that. Something that mounts to the bumper and wraps around the side to cover the running lights.

I'm buying a spare bumper from my parts guy so I don't have to modify my factory bumper.

I plan on using industrial rubber vibration dampeners (originally designed to be placed between heavy machinery and a concrete pad to absorb vibrations). Hopefully these will act as a bushing to absorb impact. Otherwise I'd have to figure out some sort of suspension system for it. The rubber dampeners seemed to be the simplest solution. 

Otherwise I could make the mount out of aluminum tubing and bolt that to the chrome moly guard. The aluminum would act as a sacrificial absorber.

[bushytails]

The factory option bullbar is impressively flimsy.  It would not provide any protection against hitting anything larger than a flying squirrel.  I assume it's to keep weight down.  I broke mine using it to pull myself up from a kneel...

The plastic clips holding the trim on are likely very brittle.  Be careful removing them.

[SuspiciousPizza]

I got a bumper but the only one available is in very rough condition. The car it came off of clearly had a front end wreck. The metal has a lot of deformations.

So I may not use the metal of the bumper. I'm thinking a rectangular tube structure that uses the bumper mount locations. The bull bar is mounted to this structure with the bushings. 

Then I'll modify the plastic portion of the wrecked bumper to fit over the rectangular tube structure. This way it looks like the factory bumper, but it uses a different metal reinforcement.

I'd probably make this out of aluminum. 

 

I cannot find the clips on the inside of the door. They're covered by a stamped piece of metal that runs the length of the door.