The alcantara door card inserts are installed on your existing door cards and involve their removal, modification & refitting.

Average time to install: 4 hours

Items supplied in this kit are:

Alcantara Door Card Inserts

There are 3 main parts to the Alcantara Door Card Inserts installation. These can be broken down into:
(as both doors are the same, only one side will be shown in the instructions below)

1. Removal of the door cards (both left hand (LH) and right hand (RH)
2. Modification of the door cards, including fitting the Alcantara inserts
3. Refitting the door cards to the car

1. Removal of the door cards

a. Remove the silver door pull insert. This is quite stiff and needs to be pried up from the bottom towards the top, taking care not to damage the surrounding plastic.

b. Remove the smooth plastic trim piece from behind the door handle - the easiest way to do this is to pull it off (gently) from the door hinge end of the door by putting your fingers behind the panel and pulling outwards.

c. Remove the 1x philips / posidrive screw which was concealed by the door handle trim. Remove the 2x philips / posidrive screws holding the door pull in place. Do not try to pull the door pull itself off the door.

d. Starting at the bottom middle, pull out the 8 puh clips holding the lower edge and both sides of the door card in place. Use your fingers to reach between the rubber door seal and the edge of the plastic door card and pull gently outwards. Do not use too much force.

e. Lift the door card upwards to release it from the door. Be careful to NOT move the door card too far away from the door as it is still connected by wiring and cables.

f. The door handle and it's associated cables will likely ping out of the door card whilst you're holding it - this is absolutely fine and is to be expected. If they don't release on their own, grab the interior door handle end of the two cables and pull them gently away from the door card, angling towards the front of the door. The mechanism will the unclip from the door card.

g. Finally unplug the two multi-plug connectors (drivers door) or one multi-plug connector (passenger door) going to the window switch pack in the door card.

2. Modification of the door cards, including fitting the Alcantara inserts

a. Use a flat head screwdriver, or other suitable implement, to push in the clip holding the upper part of the door pull to the rest of the door card

b. Placing one door card on a suitable flat & clean surface, remove the 24 philips-type screws circled below. This will help in seperating the three parts of the door.

c. To allow the parts of the door card to be fully removed, we need to drill or cut two plastic-welded plugs at the lower part of the door card (circled). You may find gentle use of a large drill bit is the easiest way to do this - you can clean up any rough edges afterwards (we will not be replacing these connectors as they are not needed). In the picture below these two plugs have already been drilled and cleaned up aftwerwards.

d. It is now necessary to remove the window switches and their surrounding panel. This is easiest if you remove the switches first by unclipping the four plastic lug-type clips holding each switch body the the door card panel and then removing downwards (away from the face of the switch). Next, the metal clips holding the switch surround to the door card panels need to be removed. These clips are strong and awkward to get at initially, but use patience and small flathead screwdrivers to gently push them out. The window switch surrounds will prevent splitting the door card apart below, so take time and care over this step.

e. You should now be able to seperate the three parts of the door card. The bottom section needs to be twisted slightly to allow the plugs drilled out above to seperate properly from the middle part of the door card. Place the top and bottom sections aside as we only need to concentrate on the middle door card section.

f. Use a flat head screwdriver, or similar, to push out the 5 clips holding the armrest to the middle door card section. You should now have a middle door card section which looks as below:

g. Taking care to ensue you have the correct side, lay the alcantara fabric on top of the middle door card section. Each alcantara panel is cut slightly over-size, so you may need to trim it slightly to fit your door card. This is done to allow for small inaccuracies in measurements or placement of the alcantara.

h. Using the lower doorpull hole and cutouts for the armrest to allign the alcantara panel, ensure there is sufficient fabric to cover all the existing vynl. Refit the armrest to help hold the alcantara panel in place whilst you check and align it fully.

i. The next step is to glue the alcantara panel to the door card. Make sure the door card vynl is completely clean and free from any contaminents (grease etc.) We recommend using a spray contact fabric adhesive and gluing the panel in 2 parts - this way you can hold the panel in place with the armrest; glue to top part of the alcantara panel, then, when that is dry (allow at least 30 minutes), remove the armrest and glue the lower part of the alcantara panel.

Items to note whilst doing this:
i. You need to ensure that the returns on the back-side of the door panel part are glued along with the alcantara - this is essential to ensure the alcantara sticks to all parts of the vynl.
ii. Practice stretching the alcantara round the tight cornersat the top of the door panel so you are certain how these will glue.
iii. You need to be very careful not to get glue where it is not wanted.
iv. When glueing the lower part of the alcantara to the door panel, great care is needed to avoid any creases being left in the alcantara.
v. Most contact glues give you only one chance to get the glueing right - please take car, and if you're not sure, take a break and practice with waste material such as waste paper.

j. With all the glueing complete, leave the panel on a flat, clean surface for at least 2 hours to allow the glue to fully cure.

k. Finally we need to re-assemble the 3 parts of the door card, in the reverse of how we removed them. You need to fit all three parts together before the screws can be put back in, but you might find it useful to try fitting the upper and lower edge screws to help keep everything together whilst you screw in the others.

3. Refitting the doorcards to the car

a. Refitting the door cards is the reversal of removal. Firstly plug the multi-plug connectors for the windows back in to their relevant sockets.

b. Re-hang the door cards onto the door by placing the top of the door card above the top of the door metl and pushing down gently. Push in the plastic push rivets around the door sides and bottom, and then re-insert the three screws holding the door panel in place.

c. Finally, replace the two trim pieces you removed from the door card at the beginning.

Your installation is now complete.