Louisd75
Adventurer
My Tacoma has the bucket seats up front which come along with the plastic center console arm rest thingee. I find that I use it quite a bit when I'm on the road, but the padding leaves a lot to be desired. After a few days driving my elbow is usually pretty sore where it makes contact, sooner if I'm offroad. I've also found that driving with it flipped up isn't comfortable either since I end up trying to find a spot to rest my elbow to brace myself on bumps. I figured it was high time to replace the pad underneath the vinyl with something more comfortable and, with a long drive in the near future, today was the day. It's an easy fix, here's how it went, in an overly detailed fashion since I'm on vacation and have time to burn :ylsmoke:.
First up, removing the vinyl. There are a bunch of screws on the bottom of the lid, but there are only 8 that you're interested in. It doesn't hurt if you remove them all, it's just more of a hassle. This picture shows the underside of the lid with the necessary screws removed:
Basically everything except the one screw on the hinge and two screws on the latch get taken out.
Pop the vinyl cover off of the plastic support after removing the top of the lid. Then shake your head as you realize that there is NO padding between the vinyl cover and the hard plastic:Wow1:. Instead, there are a bunch of little plastic nubs that probably worked to provide cushion when everything was new ten years ago. Unfortunately, most of mine had been broken off. You can see some of the remaining nubs and where the other nubs used to be:
I scraped the remaining nubs off and then set to work making the new cushions. I tried out a few types of foam material that was leftover from other projects to no avail. What wound up working perfectly was a computer mouse pad. I made a template with a piece of paper and ballpoint pen of the top of the plastic lid where the pad is going to lay:
Unless you've got legal paper lying around, template making will be a two page process. Trace the template onto the mouse pad and then cut out the padding:
Mask off the plastic lid, spray the adhesive onto the rubber side of the mouse pad and the top of the lid, wait a few minutes, then stick 'em together. Reassembly is the reverse of installation, but a bicycle tire lever will make it a little easier to get the vinyl back onto the lid. It's not a lot of padding, but the center console now feels more like the armrest on the door. Total time spent was about 45 minutes not including the trip to the store for a mouse pad.
First up, removing the vinyl. There are a bunch of screws on the bottom of the lid, but there are only 8 that you're interested in. It doesn't hurt if you remove them all, it's just more of a hassle. This picture shows the underside of the lid with the necessary screws removed:
Basically everything except the one screw on the hinge and two screws on the latch get taken out.
Pop the vinyl cover off of the plastic support after removing the top of the lid. Then shake your head as you realize that there is NO padding between the vinyl cover and the hard plastic:Wow1:. Instead, there are a bunch of little plastic nubs that probably worked to provide cushion when everything was new ten years ago. Unfortunately, most of mine had been broken off. You can see some of the remaining nubs and where the other nubs used to be:
I scraped the remaining nubs off and then set to work making the new cushions. I tried out a few types of foam material that was leftover from other projects to no avail. What wound up working perfectly was a computer mouse pad. I made a template with a piece of paper and ballpoint pen of the top of the plastic lid where the pad is going to lay:
Unless you've got legal paper lying around, template making will be a two page process. Trace the template onto the mouse pad and then cut out the padding:
Mask off the plastic lid, spray the adhesive onto the rubber side of the mouse pad and the top of the lid, wait a few minutes, then stick 'em together. Reassembly is the reverse of installation, but a bicycle tire lever will make it a little easier to get the vinyl back onto the lid. It's not a lot of padding, but the center console now feels more like the armrest on the door. Total time spent was about 45 minutes not including the trip to the store for a mouse pad.
