The Random E46/ZHP Question Thread

[///Mark_D]

I bought one of those reproduction armrests on ebay a while back. Not the greatest quality and the leather feels kinda rubbery. The stitching pattern did not match my original arm rest either, and the gray color was about two shades too dark.

I decided to go another route on my interior after picking up some natural brown seats, so I had my local upholstery shop reupholster a black armrest with some natural brown leather that I scavenged from a parts car rear seat armrest.

If you are looking for a replacement in the standard colors (black, beige, or gray) there are a few good used ones I've seen on ebay, just make sure you are actually buying an OEM one. Otherwise if you're picky and have the money to spend, it might be worth it to you to buy a new one. It's a commonly touched part of the car that is front and center when you look at the interior.

In my case since they never made a natural brown armrest, using OEM leather and reskinning an original armrest was the best route for me. Shoutout to Manda Marie Upholstery who did an excellent job on the reupholstery. https://www.mandamarieuph.com/





Here was the leather I provided along with the donor armrest. The rear seat flip down armrest had perfectly preserved leather on the inner surface that never saw sunlight, and I just treated it with some leatherique to soften it up a little before handing everything over.

[Will]

Thanks for that thorough reply, Mark. That upholstery work looks fantastic, and great idea to use the inside surface of the rear armrest!

Initially I was thinking of buying a cheap Chinese one and transfer my current leather onto it since I just need to replace the plastic hinges. But I ended up finding one locally on Offerup. I'll still swap the leather covers though as mine's in better shape.

Your armrest looks great.

[///Mark_D]

Thanks, glad to hear you were able to find a used one to swap over your leather cover. Should be pretty straightforward to swap, you just need to pry out the two plugs in the plastic cover on the inside of the lid to access the screws. Those plugs are a pain to get out without damaging the actual cover. After struggling for a while I finally just slit them with a razor blade and then pried them out with a screwdriver from the middle. The plugs are still available new if you have to destroy the old ones to get them out. PN 51168228760 and are a couple of bucks each. After removing the lid release button at the front, the rest off the leather is just held on with glue around the edges.




More pics here too if you're interested.
https://www.e46fanatics.com/threads/...#post-19018937

[Will]

Thanks, Mark! Great resources.
I'll be doing that this week / weekend.

[Will]

Update, I swapped the leather covers on the armrest tonight.

The new armrest lid on the left and the old lid on the right


Removing the leather cover


Cleaning off the old glue


Getting ready to glue the leather to the new lid


Finished.




About 3 hours start to finish. Most of it was spent cleaning off the old dried glue by using my steamer and scraper.

Thanks for the pointers and the thread you linked to, Mark. It was a big help.

[///Mark_D]

Wow that turned out great, nice work!

[alexandre]

Wondering about low dust pads too. Has nobody tried Textar?

My old car had Textar rear pads for ~6 years (nothing special, just whatever part is the OE equivalent). Definitely seemed less dusty than my Jurid fronts but they also get a lot less usage.

[Will]

My old car had Textar rear pads for ~6 years (nothing special, just whatever part is the OE equivalent). Definitely seemed less dusty than my Jurid fronts but they also get a lot less usage.

Same. My zhp has Textars on the rear. No complaints. They're good quality OE replacements, imo.