How to Replace Front Door Panel 2001-05 Ford Explorer Sport Trac

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Hi. I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20 plus years of experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like these to show you the correct way to install parts from 1aauto.com. The right parts installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video, I'll be showing you how to remove and install the door panel on this 2005 Explorer Sport Trac, same as to any '01 to '05. Tools you'll need are some various smaller millimeter or metric sockets. Also, a couple of standard sizes can substitute for the similar metrics. You'll need a small flat blade screwdriver and a putty knife and a rag to protect your paint.

Okay. Proceed with screwdriver and a rag. Under the panel right here, we'll reach in behind and just now lightly pry it out. Now, use the rag to protect the vinyl and the plastic, and that panel comes off. Then, you also want to do the same thing here for your door handle on those panels just allows you, just to lightly pry. It comes off. Then, there's two clips, one basically right here and one here for the switch panel. Get under here and give it a good quick pull. Once you get one side, the other side come off. There's two clips, two slots. Unplug the connectors to this tab right there, push it down. Thumb tab right there, push down. It can be a little more difficult.

Then, you want to remove four screws. There's two down here at the bottom. For those, I'm using 7/32, which I believe is also a 6 mm. Then behind the door pull, there's two 7 mm screws. I'm going to remove those. Now, I'm going to use the putty knife. Put a cloth on it to protect the paint. We're working in behind the door panel here. Slide it down. There's a clip right there. Now, work the screwdriver between the putty knife and the rag. You pop that clip and then I'm going to slide it up, find the next clip, put the screwdriver in there, up the next clip. Then, I'll just do that all the way around.

Here's all the different locations. See, this is the back of the panel towards the rear of the car. One, two, three, there's two on the bottom and two up the front. You really want to make sure you get your putty knife in there and just pry on the pin itself, not on the door panel. Here, I'm just removing the door lock now by twisting it counterclockwise. Once you have all those pins free and that door lock knob out, then you'll lift up and off the door panel. Just kind of push this door panel up and off. To access the inside of the door panel, you'll need to remove the speaker, which is 6 mm bolts. Then there's a little connector back here. Bezel comes off carefully. Bezel doesn't have to come all the way off.

Just very carefully pull the water shield off. You don't want to stretch it too much. Here, we'll just kind of speed up going through this. Like I said, pull that water shield off carefully. You don't want to stretch it too much or rip it and the wire is going to be a little bit of a pain to get through it. Then, I will show I'm putting it all back together. Let me start by putting the water shield back on. Use the holes, make sure the holes are exposing the holes for the clips and the door panel, and then go from there. Now, here I am putting the speaker back on. We'll slow the motion back down.

Just a little tip I found here. Obviously put the door lock pull back on, just start it on a little bit. You'll see me struggle here a little bit and what I found basically was that you get the panel in around the door handle, the inside door handle, and then on to the lock. Then, it goes together pretty easy. Then, here, the reason I'm kind craned on my neck and looking in there is you can actually see the pins and kind of see and feel the holes where the pins go into. I'm just lining up the pins before I give them a whack onto the door panel.

Now, you put in the 7 mm bolts in behind the door pull. Then, these put all these 5 or 6 mm or 7/32's, whatever you might choose. You don't want to tighten it up too much because they go into a little plastic clip that if you tighten too much, they'll just strip it and won't hold. If you feel them starting to snug up, that's good. Put on the bezels. It's really a matter of lining them here and pushing them on. This guy goes this way, actually. It's a little bit larger towards the front. Get in there, there's little pins that line up the front and back and push it real good to lock in. Then, hook up your harnesses. Just make sure these go down into these holes here, then push it on. You're all set. Tighten up your door lock knob and that's it.

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