Adhesive-bonded automotive door panels failure (1980s–1990s)

Water-soluble adhesives on inner/outer door panels failed in ~5 years from moisture/road salt attack. Door panels rattled. Affected Ford, GM, and especially the early Chrysler Dodge minivans.

Anyway, people decided they wanted to use galvanized steel. The problem is they didn't really know how to weld galvanized steel. We know how to do it today, but all through the 1980s I had research projects on welding of galvanized steel in the automotive industry. They were doing it, but at tremendous expense and quality problems. So in the early '80s they started using adhesive bonding, and one of the easiest things to adhesively bond was just putting the two halves of a door together. You've got the outside door panel and the inside panel, with the latching mechanisms on the inside. They started adhesively bonding these together, and they worked just fine for about three or four or five years. After about five years the adhesives were attacked by moisture — road salts, rainwater splashing up in there — and these door panels were just rattling. The inner and outer were sort of crimped together — they basically folded the outer panel over the inner panel by about three-eighths of an inch, and now they were rattling around in there, and you had all kinds of rattles in your cars.