124 Drivers Door Armrest Replacement
 

Has anyone done this before themselves without tearing anything up? If so, what advice can you offer?

There are so many things that must be PRIED off. If you know just where and how to PRY, I'm sure it's no problem.

Any advice?

Thanks,

Larry - take a look in diy'er on replacement of the check strap. Pretty much the same operation to be able to replace the armrest.

Maybe the following will be helpful
 

Greetings Larry,

Send me your email address and I'll send you the pdf file for door lining and armrest removal from the manual.


Charles

In removing the door panel, just remember to pry the seat controls apart very carefully; breaking a seat switch is not cheap. Also, there's a trick to removing the backside of the mirror (that triangular piece at the front corner of the window, where the mirror controller pops through)-a plastic piece on its backside projects directly into a receiver in the window frame; pry this out carefully and the whole piece removes easily from there.

Once you have the door panel off, it's fairly simple to remove the armrest. There will be a few screws holding it, as well as several melted-over plastic pieces that act as rivets. What I suggest is that you drill into the center of each of these plastic rivets with a bit of approximately the same diameter as the shaft of the rivet. Drill in an eigth of an inch or so, and the head of the rivet will pop off easily. For re-installation, I used a soldering iron with aluminum foil over the tip to melt the new plastic "rivets".

Good luck!

Thanks to everyone for the help, especially can-do for sending me the manual pages. They were very helpful.

I now have a new arm rest installed as good as new. The old one was broken and flopping around making this great car look like a neglected junker.

Thanks again,

Any time Larry
 

Greetings Larry,

Never a problem to help out those that have help me in the past. You've led me into troubleshooting directions I haven't thought of. Need anything else, just holler.

Thanks for all the help you've given me,

Charles