So the previous owner did a crappy job covering the center console arm rest and it's been bugging me for a while now. I got some a couple days off and decided to take care of it once and for all.



It was made from some thick vinyl and a big hunk of square foam. I'm not sure what happened to the original pad but this is what I got when I took it apart.



You really can't see the foam pad, but it was an 1" thick piece of standard foam. So I went to my local Walmart (which I don't condone shopping at, but living in BFE you get it where you can), and I picked up some supplies:


1) Black "pleather" (vinyl stuff), I think it was like $2.50
2) Some thin white batting for a $1.50


3) Some E-6000 (or whatever adhesive, I just bought this because it was like $5 cheaper than Gorilla Glue, I think this was the major investment of the project at $4.50)
4) A roll of Duct Tape (Sorry no picture here. You can email me if your curious.)

So I started by molding the foam with some scissors and a razor blade. I was really wishing I had one of those electric carving knives. But it turned out all right, not that it matters to much because that's what the batting is for...



So then I proceeded to wrap the batting around each side using the E-6000 and some duct tape to secure it in place till it dried, I think about 10 min. per side.



And with all 4 sides glued up.



So this is where I'm at right now, up to this point I have about 2 hours into it, but 99% of that is watching TV while the glue is drying. I also had to iron the crap out of the vinyl to get rid of the creases. I'll take some more pics one I get back after it tomorrow.

 

Alright, so after lots of debating I came to the conclusion that the previous arm rest was a little to soft for me. So I decided to start over with a piece of particle board I had laying around. I first trimmed it to size.



I then sanded down the edges with some 60 grit sandpaper. (At the end I found out that my box plane worked pretty good as well. Should have tried it first.)



After covering once, I noticed that the metal plate needed to be recessed into the arm rest. This was kind of a pain in the ars, but once I was this far, I might as well go for it. So with a chisel and hammer I was able to chisel out the recess for the plate. I think it took me about 30min.



So then I reapplied the white batting for some cushion and stapled it to the back. The corners on the batting don't matter as much as the final pleather, but I tried to make it nice. It kind of takes some trial-and-error to get all the folds out of the corners but it turned out pretty good.

Then I did the same with the pleather, started at the sides and worked my way down to the corners.



Notice the top extra flap since I cut the excess too short. So I stapled the flap upside down and then folded it over itself with a small piece of cardboard to straighten the fold and boom...



Looks pretty good if I don't say so myself. Here's what it looks like installed.



Thanks for checking it out. PEACE!

 

looks good, now u just need to do the rest to match..

 

BTW how many inside door handles does that passenger side need. looks like it has two plus a window crank?

 

4runners have 2 on the passenger side (an extra for the rear passenger). The window crank is to roll down the window...

 

1st gen 4runners anyway...

 

thanks. knew there was a good reason. dont reckon i have ever seen the inside of a first gen and i have worked for toyota for 11 years.

 

Nice job you gotta love the blood red interior, my 87 runner was the same white ex. and red int. what a combo.

 

The red interior is something else that's for sure! Got to love the 80's. I'm thinking of painting the whole center console in black, what do ya think?

 

painted my whole console semi gloss black and it turned out great....