zibby07

Just replaced the leather on a 2006 armrest lid.

The color is a 100 percent match, lighting in the photo is a bit off so it doesn't reflect the color properly.

Found a replacement cover for the armrest lid off ebay and straight forward to replace. Need a staple gun strong enough to go into plastic and just be careful to take time to stretch out the leather as your work your way around stapling the leather to the lid.

MrMark

iTrader: (3)

Nice...actually the old one may have been savable with a Magic Eraser and some leather cleaner/conditioner.

Harold57

MrMark, The problem I had with cleaning of a saddle colored arm rest was that the color comes out. So now I need the dye / paint to recolor it.

zibby07, the replacement looks good. How difficult was the replacement process?

JohnnyCake

Awesome improvement. Seems like the one tell-tale giveaway from a older SC is the leather.

Does the seller on eBay routinely sell these? If so, do you have a UserID?

zibby07

MrMark, the black portion on in my picture is not discoloration but sever scarring on the leather, so I looked into the wet sand and repaint option but found the $30 replacement on ebay so thought I'd order that and see if the quality was up to par, before spending nearly the same amount on supplies and much longer processing with wet sanding.

Harold57, the process is very simple in removing the sets of screws small size and larger size with the appropriate tools to detach the lid from the armrest console. Remove the 20 or so old staples and the old leather, align the new leather and super glue or use contact cement to attach the starting point of leather to the lid. Start on one side and in a zigzag pattern stretch and staple your way to the other and you're done.

I also ended up throwing in some extra horween leather I had to add a bit of padding to have a suppleness to the armrest which the original doesn't have.

Only problem I had was the first stapler I tried wasn't strong enough so I had to get an electric one from home depot along with a pack of the smallest staples they had available, 1/4 inch I believe.

JohnnyCake the ebay use was aoenterprises, however a simple search of "sc430 console lid" or "sc430 armrest" will give you a few other sellers as well.

Good luck!

Harold57

What is "horween leather" and where did you put it? (I see that there is a Horween Leather co. out there.)

What kind of padding did you use?

zibby07

Yeah horween leather is leather from the horween leather tannery, I had some extra from leather projects I was working on. For standard padding you don't have to do anything. There are two types of foam already on the arm rest lid so it's a mere swapping of the leather that wraps around it. When I mentioned added padding it was simply adding that additional layer of leather that is about 3 mm thick to lay over the arm rest lid first and wrapping the leather from eBay on top of it. By no means necessary but certainly adds to the comfort.

Harold57

Very interesting. A two layer leather.

SrWilliams

Zibby:

IN following your lead I went on ebay and purchased the ecru armrest leather replacement. Really good quality and match. But for two hours I have been trying to find the screws to detach the armrest from the console. For the life of me I cannot find the screws.

I went to the video suggested in the instructions that came with the product, but the video is using a different car. I know I am overlooking something quite simple but I am stuck. Can someone please direct me to exactly where are the screws to detach the armrest

Sorry for the stupid question

zibby07

Hey how are you?

You might need to shine light on it to really see the screws, when you open the arm rest only open up the top most portion, shine light on it and you will see about 10 small holes/screws that are about 4 millimeters in diameter all around the black plastic you see on the underside of the lid. So you'll need one of those small screw drivers to remove those. Once the screws are removed the plastic piece pops off and you'll see four larger screws near the hinge of the lid, remove those and then the lid comes off. If it doesn't pop right off try opening that one compartment behind the armrest to allow for more space for the lid to detach

Hope that helps.

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