| How-To: RECOVERING AND REPAIRING CENTER ARMREST I decided last summer that my Z’s tweed center console armrest had to go. Wanted to replace it with a leather skin instead. Bought a half-decent full armrest replacement on e-bay only to find out that the lids for a Z Coupe and a 2+2 are a bit different – I have a 2+2! Looked around for a while and finally bought a great looking skin – replacement time had arrived, here’s a brief write-up on the job: TOOLS AND SUPPLIES NEEDED: For recovering the armrest:
- Exacto Knife
- Spray Adhesive (I used 3M type 77)
- Paint Thinner (for cleaning up the glue)
- Small lever type paper clamps (smallest you can find)
- Some extra closed cell foam
- New cover for armrest 
For repair of cracked armrest:
- Goop Adhesive (or regular two-part epoxy)
- Sheet metal and plastic scraps
- Self-stick felt pads (1/2 inch wide, ¼ deep)
- Dremel tool with abrasive cutting wheel and wire brush PREPARATION... Start by removing the two screws holding the support arm to the lid – they are located on the inside of the storage bin. Next, remove the four hinge screws located in the rear of the lid. Take the lid inside to your work area and remove the screws holding the black inner liner to the lid top as well as those holding the magnetic latch. Gently remove the old tweed/leather glued to the lid cover, it should come up pretty easily. Carefully inspect the cushion material underneath – I had a few spots that were permanently depressed – I had to cut up some small thin patches of spare foam and glue it into the depressions. Used the 3M type 77 spray glue – spray lightly, a little goes a long way. After the glue dried – I used some rough sandpaper to further shape and form the replacement foam. 
I made a choice to recover the lid before trying to repair the cracks on the underside. I had never done this before and was new to working with leather as well. I figured if I messed it up, I’d just buy a new lid and call it a day – I got lucky and it turned out great! Lay the lid top down on the leather skin and then begin adjusting and inspecting – in my case I had stitching running down both sides, so I wanted the lines running straight and even. It was very helpful using very small paper clamps to temporarily fasten the skin to the lid. Again, had to adjust and re-adjust a few times to get both the sides and front and back orientation perfect. DON’T use large paper clamps – I did and they permanently depressed some of the cushion foam on the sides of the lid. I left them clamped overnight! 
Tip: I used a Sharpie marker to place orientation lines on the backside of the leather skin. This made it pretty easy to make small adjustments and observe how things ended up. Also found it easier to rough trim back the leather skins on the long sides – just made working with it a bit easier.
 Once everything is perfect gluing can begin. Release the paper clamps down one side of the lid and fold the skin back – spray the center of the lid cushioning and reapply the skin.
 Next, work down one side of the lid spraying a small length and wrapping the leather end around the plastic. DO NOT spray heavily – a little bit goes a long way – don’t need things dripping wet! The spray glue seemed to make the leather stretch a bit more – that actually helped with the wrapping and fitting! Once the glue dries and you’ve inspected the fit carefully, trim back the skin – it will be obvious looking at the bottom of the lid where it needs to land. DO NOT trim it back any closer than 3/8 of an inch to the edges – otherwise things will look very bad when the black plastic under insert is reattached to the lid. Trial fit the black insert back into the lid (before final cutting) to see what I’m talking about. Once the two long sides are completed, start working around the corners. I started with the rears first. Just note, my Z is a 2+2 and the rear of the console lid is about 1 inch longer than those found in the coupes. The way my lid wraps back there is a little different too, The corners weren’t as hard to do as they first appeared. The trick is to bunch up the leather around the corners – but to do it evenly. Trial bunch it first and then cut slits in the corners and trim off excess pieces where it bunches – all done on the inside of the lid lip. What you are doing is creating space so the leather can be bunched together without being too thick and bulky. Again, don’t cut too close to the wrap edge – allow at least 3/8 inch of skin to wrap underneath the console lip. 
Tip: Inspect the old armrest cover to see how it was cut for the corners. Right in the corners they left a thin long strip – it was helpful to have that strip for the leather (see picture). Made it easy to pull the edges tight! Once you’re satisfied that the bunching is working nicely, spray the underneath of the skin with some glue and starting working everything into place. Since the glue made the skins stretch a bit – it was easy to push everything around to get it nice and smooth. Glue lets you work this way for at least 2 minutes – plenty of time to get everything just right. If you don’t like how it looks – peel the skin back up, re-spray with a little glue and start again. Tip: Use some mineral spirits on a rag to get any spray glue off your hands and the finish side of the leather. Keep the rag handy – your fingers will get gooey pretty fast. Here’s how the finished rear corners turned out...
 Once the rear corners were done I start working the front of the lid – where the magnetic catch is located. Here’s that corner being worked:
 Here’s a another view of the whole front lid completed – for the corner that goes to the hand-lift area, notice how the skin had to be pulled on a angle to get it to wrap correctly:
 Also notice from this view how the support ribs inside of the lid are not flat but curved a bit? As I explain how I repaired the cracked lid – keep that curved surface in mind. FIXING THE CRACKED LID... Here’s a good picture of the cracked lid – I highlighted the stress cracks with a blue marker so they stand out better in the picture:
 The other spare lid I purchased via e-bay was also cracked in the same locations. The Coupe and 2+2 lids are identical except for the extra length of plastic in the rear. The repairs I did will work for either type of armrest. One other thing to note from the picture – those circles are where the black lid inner liner also has formed circular supports. The design idea was for the upper lid and lower liner to mesh together and provide combined support for the armrest. The only problem with this design was that the distance between the two circular support points is about 4 inches. That distance (w/out support) is just long enough to cause the plastic to stress and crack when a very concentrated force (elbow?) pushes down with a good deal of weight. My repair involved using a Dremel abrasive cutting wheel to remove some sections of the lid support ribs and then gluing into place added reinforcements.
 Here’s how it looked after I added the reinforcements...
I used a combination of some plastic scraps, thin sheet metal folded into two and on the lid’s rear area I used my Dremel tool to shape out some galvanized (lumber) splicing plates. I basically used whatever I had around the shop for the repair – I did need to bend the metal a little bit so it hugged the curved lid.
GOOP type glue was used for this repair, I’ve used it many times and it works really well. The longer GOOP cures (at least 24 hours) the stronger it becomes. It also worked great in free form to reinforce some of the lid’s support rib cells. Here’s a closer shot of the repair:
 Tip: - I found that drilling some holes in the metal and plastic used for these repairs allowed places for the glue to squeeze out from underneath and not make a mess oozing out in other places. - Before gluing the repair pieces into place – I used my Dremel tool with a wire brush to clean up the ribbed lid surface. The lid has yellow glue sprayed all over it, from original manufacturing, to hold the covering in-place. In order to have the repair glue bond well to the plastic some cleaning is recommended. One of other things I did to further reinforce the armrest lid was to insert some felt pads into both the lid and the mating black inner liner. I did this to make sure there weren’t any stress points remaining between the two circular support areas. As you can see from this picture – the pads were laid out so that they touched one another in both the armrest lid and the mating black inner liner.
 Here’s how the whole thing looked once everything was put back into my Z:
 The lid has been in the car for a few weeks now – I’ve tried putting a lot of force on it to see what would happen, never even budged – was rock solid! Another benefit to reinforcing the lid is that it feels a lot more solid and the added extra weight makes it shut more forcefully too! This job came out great considering I’ve never done any kind of upholstery work before – I’m a very happy camper. Others out there with crappy tweed armrests shouldn’t be reluctant to tackle this project either! Enjoy!!! DISCLAIMERS… READ AND FOLLOW ALL SAFETY PROCEDURES RECOMMENDED IN THE
NISSAN SERVICE MANUAL FOR WORK ON THE 300ZX Z32. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY WHEN WORKING
ON YOUR CAR. THIS WRITE-UP IS AN EXAMPLE OF ONE WAY TO PERFORM THIS MAINTENANCE/REPAIR, IT MAY CONTAIN ERRORS AND NOT BE THE SAFEST OR BEST WAY TO DO IT. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR DETERMINING HOW THESE REPAIRS SHOULD BE EXECUTED IN A SAFE AND CAUTIOUS MANNER -- AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY HARM TO YOU, YOUR CAR, FUTURE GENERATIONS, YOUR PROPERTY OR TO OTHERS WHILE OR AFTER PEFORMING THIS OR ANY OTHER AUTOMOBILE SERVICING...
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How-To: RECOVERING AND REPAIRING CENTER ARMREST - 
20:20:09 05/24/05
