I am making a new set of door panels, and trying to remove the inverted nuts to separate the door rails from the panels themselves.

I tried using a pair of needle nose pliers to remove my clips, after pinching myself on the first one I decided to make something to remove those clips.

I made me a nifty tool out of a coupling nut and an old scratch awl. I had to grind on the coupling a little bit to make it fit exactly in the inverted nut.

After cutting off a section of the scratch awl I was able to hammer it in until it was held in with pressure.

All in all it was 10 minutes of work and total of 33 cents spent on the nut.

The coupling nut was a 1/4"-20 THREAD SIZE, 7/8" LENGTH, 3/8" WIDTH

 

Is it really that difficult to take off the door panels on these cars? Is this just for the firebird and will the camaros have the same set up with these clips?

 

Camaro and Firebird have the same clips. It's just hard to remove the upper pieces with a pair of needle nose pliers w/o damaging the panels.

 

Interesting. So is it a headache getting the door panels back on?

 

Inverted? I've always just used an 11mm on those....or maybe not.

 

The tool he made isn't for getting the trim panel off the door, it's for getting the plastic parts off the trim panel. And yes this tool will be very helpful both in removal and reassembly.

 

But on the back of the trim panel they're put on upside down so the tool has to fit into the hole. A socket won't work in this application.