Photo Essay - Centre Console Disassembly

[PhilMeUp]

I was in a taxi workshop tonight and noticed the remnants of a Falcon wreck in the corner. Then I realised that it’s the same colour as my car (Lightening Strike). I checked the compliance plate - October 2008. And both my girlfriend’s and my car were made in November 2008. Oh, this has started to get interesting - everything is identical between the three cars.

My girlfriend’s taxi got rear ended a couple of weeks ago. Nothing major; just damage to the tailgate and rear bumper. And some bimbo reversed her 4WD into my driver’s door a while ago. Which was going to mean that both cars would be off the road for a day or two for panel beating repairs.

Negotiations began, and I ended up buying for $900:
- Driver’s door, with the window (as new). This is handy - my window was smashed in a break-in and I’ve never been happy with the secondhand replacement that I got.
- Rear passenger door glass. Mine was smashed in a second break-in a while ago and the replacement secondhand glass looks terrible. This one is like new.
- Rear tailgate for Deb’s car.
- Rear bumper for Deb’s car.
- Complete centre console, including gear lever surround and gear lever (he wouldn’t sell only the bits that I wanted).
- Windscreen - he’s got a few of them, so I’ll pick out the best one. The driver’s side wiper blade on my car came loose recently. My day driver ignored the screeching sounds of the metal scratching into the glass, resulting in some scratching at eye level. I’ve been a tad miffed about this ever since.

Another thing that has bugged me for a while is when the small light globe under the gear select lever blows, and the P R N D ceases to be lit up. After a couple of feeble attempts in the past, tonight I was going to go the distance and actually get the job done.

My day driver has an amazing ability to disperse coffee throughout the car, especially throughout the console. I know that it’s not intentional, but I’m still quite amazed by just how he manages to get coffee into otherwise unreachable places.

The original objective here was just to replace the gear indicator globe, but the gear lever surround is looking pretty ugly. And now I’ve got the entire centre console lot, which is in better condition that what’s currently in there. Might as well swap the entire setup over.

In these photos my car looks like a rubbish tip. It actually isn’t - my Canon G12 is in for repair and I’ve used my old Panasonic FZ30. The flash on that camera is harsh, and shows up the grime a lot more dramatically than it really is.

In my car the plastic surrounding the gear select lever has been bubbling for a while. And the plastic top of the gear lever is also worn. I’m going to replace them both.



The first thing to do is remove both of the front seats. You remove the plastics that cover the bolts, and then remove those bolts. You’ll need a Torx T50 socket for that. It’s cumbersome removing all eight bolts with a ratchet, so I use a ratchet to loosen them and then a cordless drill with the T50 socket to remove the bolts.

When removing the driver’s seat, it helps if you raise the seat to its maximum height. This gives you better access for unplugging the three cables, as well as making it easier to plug them back in later on.

If you haven’t removed the seats before then be careful with the cables. The yellow one is easy enough. The grey one in the middle has a plastic clip underneath that you have to pull down from underneath - I use a fingernail for this, or a small flat blade screwdriver if I have to. Like the yellow cable, the clip on the white cable is facing outward and is also easy to undo.

If you have trouble with removing the cables then gently move the seat around - pushing it backward will lift up the cable area so that you can get a better look. The passenger side only has two cables as it doesn’t have the electric adjustment that the driver’s seat has.

Once the seats are out there is a bolt on each side of the console to remove. This requires an 8mm socket.

A quick note about tools: I’ve always stuck with (and standardised on) the traditional 1/2” drive stuff, but lately I’m finding that for smaller stuff like the various console bolts, a 1/4” drive setup is easier to use. In the bottom of the photo you can see what I’ve used here - a 1/4” ratchet and spinner handle (ie like a screwdriver but with a 1/4” drive at the end). I can use the ratchet to loosen the bolt, then detach the ratchet and use the spinner handle like a screwdriver. I got the spinner handle from Repco - it’s got a good, beefy rubber handle instead of the usual plastic, so it’s easier to grip when I need to apply extra force. I bought the ratchet from Supercheap Auto for around $25, although Stanley make an almost identical one.



To remove the console, start from the rear. The vent slides out easily enough by pulling the top of it out. You’ve then got the two screws that attach the hinge to the console. I left the hinge attached to the console lid. I ended up fitting the console lid and hinge off the wreck, as the console lid was in better condition.



This is where I’ve gotten stuck before. It turns out that you reach down with a fairly small flat blade screwdriver and push those two plastic tabs to the left. There was nothing in the other two holes. It’s a bit fiddly, but once you’ve got those two tabs pushed the right way then the back of the console comes loose from the car floor.



Then it’s onto the front half of the console. There are four silver coloured screws to remove (two of them are in the photo). There’s the Philips head screw to the right of one of the silver screws - remove that. Then remove the two Philips head screws on each side - they hold the plastic sides in place. Don’t forget to memorise where each one goes - something I completely fail at, so taking photos can come in handy later on.

There are various other small screws that you’ll see around the place - you don’t need to remove any of them.



Remove the three screws that hold the handbrake lever in place. You’ll use a 10mm socket for that. I also removed the handbrake cover and cleaned it in warm soapy water.



There are two screws on each side of the upper console to remove. The upper one holds the cigarette lighter shelf in place, so once you’ve removed those two you can get that shelf out of the way. Unfortunately for me, I’ve got the taxi meter there, and I was concerned that if I disconnected it then it would need resetting the next day (meaning that the taxi could not be used for a few hours). The screw facing us holds the centre console in place - remove the screw on each side. Pay attention to which screws go where - the upper pair and lower pair are different from each other.



Now I’m getting somewhere. The centre console has been removed - a bit fiddly with the cigarette lighter shelf and taxi meter in the way but it wasn’t too difficult.

I’ve also removed the EFTPOS stuff and the cable for the Parrot handsfree kit is there (the three wired cable).

And yes, there’s enough food debris to feed a small country. That’ll be getting cleaned up.

I’ve also marked a plastic tab and a slot in the photo - they don’t matter right now, but you’ll need to line them up when you’re putting the console back in later on.



There’s a Philips head screw at the front of the gear lever - remove that screw and the gear lever lifts straight out.



Now that all the screws are removed it’s time to get the plastic surround out. This was a bit tricky - there are grooves on the silver plastic - one at the top left and one on the bottom right (seen here). Just apply enough force to slide it all upward. I was paranoid about breaking this, although it’s just occurred to me that this one is going in the bin anyway (because of the bubbling).



Now that the silver plastic surround is loose I can see where the light globe goes. Finally, I got what I came here for. The black plastic rotates and comes out easily enough. I’ve also labelled the white plastic fork - that’s important for re-assembly later.



I fitted the new globe and turned the headlights on to test it. It came on. It’s taken me years to do this, so I was pretty pleased with myself right about now. I’ve labelled the black lever - that’s what the white plastic fork has to go on top of during re-assembly.



When putting the silver plastic surround back on, make sure that you put the white plastic fork on the left over the small black lever on the right. This is the bit that shows whether you’re in P R N or D when you slide the lever back and forth - rather important.



As mentioned earlier, there are two odd looking plastic clips that attach the back of the console to the floor of the car. When I removed the console, one of the clips had fallen back down into the car body. There was a paperclip on the floor, so I folded it out and went fishing. There was a bit of pressure here - if I stuffed up and pushed the clip out of the way, where it couldn’t be reached, then I wouldn’t be able to retrieve it. I managed to pull the clip forward to this point so that I could get it back out and onto the console base.



I sat back and looked around. It looked like some sort of automotive battlefield - there was crap everywhere. And now I’ve got to put it all back together. By now it was about 3am, and there’s not a whole lot of people that I can call at that time if I get stuck and need to phone a friend.

I’ve used a brush to clear the food debris away from the gear lever area and got most of the transmission tunnel looking better.



I gave the replacement console a good wash with CT18 cleaner and the garden hose. This console is identical to the old one, but cleaning the old one was going to take a while and I wanted to get back on with reassembly before I started to forget how it all went together.

On the first go, I forgot to line up the tab on one of the sides at the front of the console. Bugger. That didn’t turn out to be a huge problem - there was some delicate balancing with my bum on the transmission tunnel and feet on each side guiding the console into place properly. There was some… strongly worded… verbal commentary whilst I did this.



A photo of the old gear lever surround and the new one that replaced it. The new one looks a heap better.



I’ve started putting screws back in. I’ve left one of the silver ones out so that you can see what it looks like. The cigarette lighter shelf is back in place, along with the four screws that go on the upper console and that shelf. Right about now I was sensing a sneaking suspicion that I might not entirely screw up this whole project after all.



The rear of the console just clips back into the place via the two plastic clips underneath it. I put the carpet bit back in the middle and used a small flat blade screwdriver to push the carpet tabs down into their matching holes in the bottom.



The two gearlevers side by side.

[PhilMeUp]

Now that I had access to the door frame plastics I cleaned them up a bit. I normally use a eucalyptus aerosol for this, but also tried a can of cleaning wax that I bought recently. I thought that the cleaning wax was a waste of money until I tried it here - it did a fairly good job of getting the grime out of the plastics.



I’ve used a brush to get as much of the junk (that was under the seats) either in front or behind where the seats go so that it can be vacuumed later. Everything’s back in place and much to my delight there were no screws left over. Even the EFTPOS stuff went back into its correct place without too much drama.



The finished job. The seats are back in place - don’t forget to plug the cables back in before you put the Torx T50 bolts back in. And yes, that is a Recaro driver’s seat - it’s ugly, but I find it to be more comfortable and less fatiguing, especially for the 12-14 hour stints on weekend nights. The Recaro base also doesn’t tear and break like the standard Falcon one does. That particular seat came from a Proton Satria GTi, which had Recaro seats from the factory.




Overall, this job turned out to not be as difficult as I was expecting. I’ve kept the old console - in the future I’ll clean it and swap it over every six months or so. That way, I’ll get the console cleaned but will be able to just swap them over instead of remove/clean/re-install.

I’m extremely pleased with the outcome here. The gear lever surround looks like it should. The gear lever plastic feels like new again. The gear indictor is lit up at night. And there’s no coffee grunge anywhere.

[sr71]

Nice write up.

How long did this take you to do. Thanks

[PhilMeUp]

How long did this take you to do. Thanks

At least twice as long as it should have taken me.

[matsfgxr6turbo]

except on your seat mate that looks gross but good write up

[PhilMeUp]

except on your seat mate that looks gross but good write up

Yeah, the camera flash at night made it look way worse than it was.

[RB Snake]

That would have been a pain with the cabcharge meter, if you disconnect it it'll go into installer function mode lol. I've had to do this countless times on taxis, it's amazing how so much dirt builds up under there.

[PhilMeUp]

That would have been a pain with the cabcharge meter, if you disconnect it it'll go into installer function mode lol. I've had to do this countless times on taxis, it's amazing how so much dirt builds up under there.

There's a battery in the Cabcharge meter that eventually wears out. I had problems with that back in 2010.

I got lucky - someone did me a favour and swapped it for a reconditioned one without charging me for it.

I think that the battery is soldered in - wouldn't be hard to replace. And will prevent a heap of grief.

In English terms for everyone else: there's a battery in the taxi meter that keeps the settings when the power or main car battery is disconnected. If that internal battery is stuffed then the taxi has to be taken to somewhere that can reset/reprogram the meter. There are only three of these places in Perth.

[VippiN]

Hory sheet. Glad I haven't had to pull apart my interior yet. Doing it on a Ford Laser is a bit easier! Have the whole interior out in about 10 minutes lol

[PhilMeUp]

Update: I noticed last weekend that the globe had blown again, 20 months and 174,000km later. I decided to put an LED in there instead and clean the centre console again.

Once I removed the cup holder and gear lever surround I saw the same coffee grunge mess as last time. This is from the day driver (I don’t drink coffee).

The centre console out of the car. Coffee mess everywhere.

Instead of putting in a globe that will probably only last another 174,000km, I decided to try an LED from Jaycar. Details:

T5 Wedge Replacement LED Globe (White)

http://www.jaycar.com.au/p/ZD0380

Cat No: ZD0380

Price: $1.95

The LED is brighter than the previous globe. Hopefully it will last longer.

I sprayed water over the centre console with the garden hose and let the water soak in to the mess while I cleaned the other plastics inside the house. After about 15 minutes the mess on the centre console hosed off easily - no brushes or physical contact was required.

As much as I wanted to use my petrol-powered blower to dry the console at 2am, I went with the much quieter method of using a towel to dry the console before putting back in the car.

Putting everything back into place. When I was putting the centre console back in I was initially sitting to the left side of it, but wasn’t able to see that I’d actually put the console over the handbrake lever.

Everything back in place. Plus new floor mats.

Last time this job took me a bit over three hours (taking photos also drags it out a lot). This time I had it done in one hour and 20 minutes, and didn’t freak out anywhere near as much about the interior of my car being in pieces everywhere. Much better.