This thing had a cracked fiber board near the lock button. Found some metal brackets and decided to use them like a splint.
Drinking a German beer while fixing a German car, more authentic.
Marking the where the holes are going to go before drilling.
One bracket with screws and washers ready to go on the door card.
I used brackets around the edges to secure loose pieces of the liner - mostly fan shroud clips.
They all took a fair amount of bending / shoving with slip joint pliers. I hammered on the L-shaped brackets to make them as flat as I could on my patio. A vise would have worked wonders. Good enough for this though.
Close up of the mended crack.
Brand new outside rubber strip as a bonus. Just so happens the only door bavauto was selling this for at the time was this exact one on my car (front right). Also on my car it was the one in the worst condition. Gotta love it when that happens.
Might look kinda ghetto but for function it works great - nice and tight door card. New handle border too. It would be fun to make metal door cards some day but for now this works just fine.