Ford EscapeThe Ford Escape has been thoroughly updated, reinforcing the character and appeal that have made it America's perennial best-selling small sport-utility vehicle. The improvements nearly cover the spectrum, and inject a new level of refinement. We'd call the Escape a little truck among small SUVs. Its new styling deliberately invokes Ford's larger, truck-based SUVs.
Anybody else experience the vinyl panel on the inside of the doors peeling away? I had mine start peeling a little bit last year, then real bad recently. I had an upholstrey shop repair them because I was afraid they would look awful if I did it myself. Well, it ended up looking awful, and a few months later it is hanging off again. They said doing it when it was cold wasn't a good idea, which was frustrating because if they knew it wouldn't work, tell me to wait a few months... Anyway, he jammed more glue in there, and they held on another week or two, and looked like I had one of my kids did it (the oldest is 3 1/2). I was fed up, so I went back to the shop and said what do we do? He was very nice and said he would replace the vinyl with fabric, he actually had some leftover generic brown stuff that he didn't even have to charge for, so he is installing for only a few bucks more this week. I'm dropping off the panels this week. Assuming the fabric works, my total cost to fix will be very fair at $150 for 4 doors. Has anybody had any luck doing anything else? Aside from this the car looks essentially new, so I don't want to do something second rate...
Don't waste your time by replacing it with fabric. Mine is fabric and is peeling off on all four doors also. I have an 02. A friend has an 03 with leather and her's just recently started peeling also. I've tried all sorts of glues and nothing will hold it on.
Where do you live? I've wondered if it's due to heat, we're in Florida. Something with whatever glue they used not being able to hold up to high heat?
Atlanta, so it is hot. It sits outside in the hot sun all day at my office. The exterior plastic is drying out too. The fabric held out through this summer...
Yep, it's happening to mine too. First it was just the front doors, I found a replacement driver's side panel on ebay, then the back ones started to go too. As a Ford guy, I am very disappointed in the way this piece was made. It seems like something GM would do. I tried to just rip the leather and the foam off and leave it with just the plastic showing, but I can't get the glue off to make it look decent. If anyone comes up with a good solution, please post it here. This seems to be a common problem.
My cloth solution is still going strong. You would never know it wasn't factory. If you peel the old stuff off yourself, then use lacquer thinner to clean most of the glue off there isn't much left for an upholstery shop to do so it shouldn't be very expensive. The panels are so small a shop should just be able to use remnants from a bigger job.
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Vinyl on Doors peeling away 
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