03-06 armrest re-cover - how to remove?

[owlman]

My center console armrest "leather" is cracked and blah. I'm trying to take off all the plastic mechanism so I can pull off the old leather, or at least be able to cleanly tuck in the new leather.

I took off all the torx screws I can see (27!) but now I'm stuck and can't separate the leather top. Has anyone successfully disassembled this? Looks like the slider rails are riveted on, so I wonder if those are holding it all together.

 

[joegr]

Yep. I've done this. You have to drill out the four rivets. Be careful not to drill too deep or too large of diameter. There are some more screws to remove after that, if I recall correctly. When I finished recovering it, I used 5/32 Inch X 1/2 Inch rivets to put it back together. I used four washers on the plastic side, as I was afraid that the rivets would pull through the plastic (The original ones are the exploding type, but I replaced with regular ones.) I glued the washers in place before putting the new covering material on.

 

[owlman]

Thanks! After drilling one rivet out I realized I could yank off the existing leather, lift the foam, and just snip off the rivets from the top. That was a bit easier.

Unfortunately the leather skin I bought off eBay is too small to properly wrap it around the armrest frame--seems designed to only be glued on top, which doesn't look very good. Off to the local upholstery shop...

 

[1LoudLS]

wouldn't it just have been easier to buy a used lid? back when i was searching for one, there were tons of them except they all had the broken latch that I needed. which shouldn't be a problem if your latch was fine.

 

[owlman]

Yeah, but most of the uncracked genII lids I saw online were $80+, didn't really want to pay that for a used top. I figured I'd do it right and pamper my elbow

 

[1LoudLS]

fair enough.

when I was looking, most of what I found was around$40 for broke ones, after finding the right person here, I paid $50 shipped for a non broke one. no worries, I just figured it would be easier to get a good match in both color and grain going with a used one.