Removing door armrest, trim coming loose
 

Hi All,

Just after some help in removing the armrest from the door right near the door handle. On the passenger side the trim is coming loose from underneath the armrest. I just need to remove it and probably re-glue it?

Here are some pics.

http://i40.tinypic.com/2znt.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/2e5jfc6.jpg

I am interested in hearing solutions for this as well because mine is doing the same thing :(

Need to take door panel off and uncrew from the rear.

I've had this happen to mine and have fixed it successfully. The bulk of the work is in the removal of the door panel. The fix itself is quite simple and easy.

You will have to remove the handle. All of this work will have to be done from the opposite side of the door panel.

If I remember correctly, that arm rest is not held on by screws. The actual piece that holds the shape of the arm rest, the one the leather and foam covers is thermoplastic.

The thermoplastic has short round posts (pencil erasers the height and diameter of your pinky finger nail). These posts correspond to holes on the door panel (which is made of compressed fiberboard). Once mated, the ends of the tiny posts are hot stamped at the factory so the ends form some type of flat head rivet. There will be a couple of them.

Now that you know what you are working with, you need to find a drill bit large enough in diameter to drill out the flange on each of these tiny posts. You only need to drill shallow enough. Don't go too deep as you'll ruin the posts! You'll need these intact for later.

You'll see that it takes very little pressure to drill out the plastic flanges. Drill them all out, remove the arm rest pad, do your repair.

Pop it back in. You should have a two part plastic epoxy compount at this point. You can get this at Lowe's or Home Depot (if you're in the U.S.). Should cost you about $5-7 dollars for the double tubed syringe.

Mix it and apply to all of the posts you LIGHTLY drilled out. You may want to weigh down either side at this point to really cinch the arm rest back to the door panel so it's nice and snug and has as minimal gap as possible. Allow that to dry 24 hours.

VOILA!

All done! put it all back and crack open a cold one!



MANGO

Are there any special tricks in removing the door panel ,especially the airbag !! Three out of the four of my armrests are coming undone and I would like to repair them.
Any handy hints would be appreciated .

Airbag is on the door, not attach to the door panel.

I have one rear arm rest that is the same. I will take some pics of when I tackle mine.

I did mine on the driver side. I had the door off for some thing else and when I saw the hot stamped plastic I decided I didn't want to take it off. Although the epoxy would be the way to go. I'd prly use epoxy putty. I ended up using super glue to get it back down. I put it on the leather then shoved it in quickly and held till it dried. It was not a perfect fix, to be honest, but it looks way better than before and it was really quick. It's held good for the past 4 months. Knowing the idea of using epoxy to replicate the plastic hot stamp, that is how I would do it. I was just scared to ruin it.

Just throwing that out there.

Any special tricks or tips for removing the door liner ?

What about removing the hard plastic trim piece (door pull) that's shown going upward in the first pic? On mine the rubberized paint is worn in places and I wanted to remove it and paint that section a normal flat color. Thanks