Centre Consol Change
Pocket Lid Repair

About a week after I bought my shark I made the fatal mistake of putting my elbow down too hard on the lid of the change pocket in the centre console. There was a crunch and a general sinking feeling. I have seen a few 928s with this problem. It easily spotted by looking for a skin that is not taute.

Its a fairly easy repair, but can appear daunting. You have to peel the leather skin off, then hack away all the foam padding and generally clean up the underlaying plastic. This is no easy task and takes patience! Your one advantage here is that the plastic underneath is a thermoset plastic (similar to bakalite) and is quite impervious to everything (except for elbows). I used thinners (not acetone) to help clean off the original contact adhesive. Still, its a messy job that takes a while.

Once the plastic is clean you need to dress the wound. The plastic in Silver split and cracked in flakes that, once broken, prevented it from going back to its original shape. The easiest solution is to get a Dremel power tool, or a drill and simply cut along the line of the crack. The broken flakes fall away and leave you with a lid that can be made flat again.

I then roughed up the top surface of the lid with the Dremel (loving the new toy!) and drilled four small holes in the corners. I placed the lid on top of a block of wood that fitted within the edges and drove small nails through the holes that I had drilled. The result was that the nails pulled the warped lid back into shape (nice and flat, no dip in the middle).

I then mixed up a batch of resin and applied a thin layer to the top of the lid. I had previously cut out two layers of light weight (5 ounce?) woven roving fibre glass cloth to a size just a bit smaller than the top of the lid. I layed these down on top of the lid and wetted them down with a little more resin.

Just a point of note here. You don't need big pools of resin. Just enough to wet out the coth is all you need.

When the resin had dried I removed the nails and turned the lid over. To fill the gap left by the Dremel cutter I mixed some micro balloons (glass beads) with resin to make a filler paste. This was squeezed into the gap and smoothed off.

I then repeated the process of nailing down and applying fibre glass on the bottom. This time however I gave it three layers of cloth as this side is under tension when you lean on it, so requires more strength.

When it had all dried I cleaned up the edges and generally roughened all surfaces with the Dremel. The lid was now very strong and ready to be re-upholstered. This process was pretty easy.

I had some 3 millimeter neoprene left over from my cargo area mat, so I cut off an over sized section and cleaned it up. Next I applied a thick layer of automotive contact adhesive to both the top of the lid and to the underside of the neoprene and left it to dry.

Half an hour later I placed the lid top side down on the neoprene and pressed down firmly. This stuff really sticks. I then carfully folded the sides down and stretched it around the corners. A word of advice. Next time I would start with the corners then work in from the middle of each side. I was lucky, but its easy to get wrinkles in the neoprene on the corners.

The execess was trimmed off with a pair of scissors leaving a nicely coated lid.

After cleaning all the gunk off the edges of the back of the skin I applied a thick coat of contact adhesive, covering the original glued area. I also coated the inside edge of lid. After 30 minutes drying time I placed the lid into the skin.

This is the tricky part. Its really hard to get it to line up the same as the original skin. Mine is ok, but missed just a little bit. I pulled the skin taute along the length of the lid first and pressed the ends down to glue them in place. This results in long wrinkles on the top of the lid.

Then I worked from the centre out on the sides, pulling the skin tight and flat. By the time I had it all worked out and glued down the top was nice and smooth and flat.

To finish the lid off I glued another layer of the 3mm neoprene to the inside. 3mm is a little too thick to fit neatly back into the plastic frame. However if you thin down the edges a bit it fits fine.

And that's it. All in all a fantastic job. It looks better than it ever did.