stallion_412
TYF Newbie
The driver's side door built-in armrest on my 2015 Yukon was making a crunching sound if I put any weight on it. This bothered me enough to dig into it. I removed the door panel (there are lots of youtube instructionals on how to do this) and took a look.
I carefully unhooked the white sound deadener, turned the door panel upside down, and with a little pressure, it's easy to see: That white honeycomb material is all cracked apart.
I reached out to GM and they can only replace the entire door panel, which isn't cheap. I decided to come up with my own solution. I had leftover 2-part epoxy from some carpentry work I did a while back, so with the door panel upside-down I mixed some up and poured it in. This was a slow hardening (5 hour) epoxy, and honestly I think I'd recommend a faster one. JB Clearweld has a 5 minute harden time and would probably work better in this use case.
One 'gotcha' I ran into: the edge of this panel is not completely watertight, so some epoxy leaked out and onto the face of the door panel. I was able to spot this and clean it off easily enough, but if I had to do it again, I would try to seal this purple shaded area up with some silicone, and even then just try to avoid getting any epoxy in that area. Keep it inside the 'cells' of the honeycomb material and it should be fine.
After it hardened, I reinstalled the door panel and it works great! It's a little harder/stiffer than it was originally, but there's still padding on top. I'm not sure why it was made with that honeycomb shape to begin with - maybe has something to do with being able to crush during a side impact collision? if so, well, this turns it into a solid block, but at least I"m not annoyed at my crunchy door every time I lean on my left elbow a little bit.
Hope this helps someone else who encounters this issue!
I carefully unhooked the white sound deadener, turned the door panel upside down, and with a little pressure, it's easy to see: That white honeycomb material is all cracked apart.
I reached out to GM and they can only replace the entire door panel, which isn't cheap. I decided to come up with my own solution. I had leftover 2-part epoxy from some carpentry work I did a while back, so with the door panel upside-down I mixed some up and poured it in. This was a slow hardening (5 hour) epoxy, and honestly I think I'd recommend a faster one. JB Clearweld has a 5 minute harden time and would probably work better in this use case.
One 'gotcha' I ran into: the edge of this panel is not completely watertight, so some epoxy leaked out and onto the face of the door panel. I was able to spot this and clean it off easily enough, but if I had to do it again, I would try to seal this purple shaded area up with some silicone, and even then just try to avoid getting any epoxy in that area. Keep it inside the 'cells' of the honeycomb material and it should be fine.
After it hardened, I reinstalled the door panel and it works great! It's a little harder/stiffer than it was originally, but there's still padding on top. I'm not sure why it was made with that honeycomb shape to begin with - maybe has something to do with being able to crush during a side impact collision? if so, well, this turns it into a solid block, but at least I"m not annoyed at my crunchy door every time I lean on my left elbow a little bit.
Hope this helps someone else who encounters this issue!
