Alright. Trim install. As I said before, I went with silver alcantara over the piano trim. I used this write up (
http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...hortcut-Method) for my inspiration and will be adding my own commentary here (thanks S4Tranquility).
Tools I used:
- small phillips head screwdriver
- socket wrench with 10 and 8mm sockets with extension
- Long, thin flathead screwdriver
- Butter knife to be used as a pry tool
1. Start with the doors. They are the easier bits.
-Put all your windows down
- Remove three screws, two on either side by the window molding and one under the handle in the middle of the door, see pic below
-Now pull down the plastic door handle molding that was held on by that last screw to reveal 2 more brass screws (only 1 in rear doors) that hold the door card in place. Be gentle with this piece, start with the side closest to the front of the car. Don't pull it out completely, just enough to access the 2 screws. see another picture below.
-Put your hands on the bottom part of the door card and push up. You may have to wiggle it back and forth to get it to move.
-Make sure the locking indicator is not stuck in its slot, you can bend this too far. Make sure you take it out.
-Lean the door card up against your body. There are wires still attached so don't let it lean more than the pic below
-There is a black foam coating over where the clips holding the trim in are. Be gentle pulling this back, start from the top.
-Here is what you are looking to remove to get the trim out. There are 5 of these on the front doors and 4 on the rears. Yes, this is accurate. It is easy to miss the middle most clips as they are hard to see without really sticking your head down there, but, trust me, they are there.
-The best way to remove these suckers is to push down with your finger on the 2 pronged section while you push it out from over the metal stud. Make sure you save these, you will need them for the re-installation of your new trim. If you lose one or even two per door, you still should be alright.
-With ALL clips removed, push outward on the far left and right metal studs to loosen the trim up, it won't come out with you just yanking on it. Be patient and keep pressing on the metal studs, it'll come out eventually.
-Now you are going to do exactly the reverse of what you just did with your new trim. If you only use 3 or 4 of the clips to put the trim back in, that's no big deal, just leave the center most clips off. On the front doors, I only used 4 because the center most metal stud was a PITA to get to.
-Make sure to put the foam lining back in place!!!!
-The only trick to getting the door card seated property is to be gentle and patient. Wiggle, wiggle, and wiggle some more. It will go on eventually. But seriously, be patient with it. And make sure the door lock indicator thingy goes back in properly.
Take a break after 4 doors. Provided you have never done this before, it probably took you over an hour.
Follow my order here, trust me
Step 2. Hazard surround
-Remove hazard surround, do NOT put in the new piece, its easier to get the long dash piece out without the hazard surround in place. To do this, use your butter knife and insert it in top of the piece and pry it forward slowly, the top should pop right out. Do the same for the bottom. There are 6 clips that you need to pop the piece out of. See below for examples of the clips
pry from the top like this first, then go from the bottom:
Step 3 Removing the dash under the steering column
-Take off the fuse panel cover. Be careful but use your butter knife. There are 2 clips that will pop out.
-There are 2 very obvious bolts inside the fuse panel area that you have to remove with your socket wrench. see this pic:
-There are 2 more bolts holding up the dash and the are under lil soft plastic pieces around the knee bolster. Get on the floor of the driver's area and look for these plastic panels. There should be obvious. You can remove them with your butter knife where the arrows point and each should reveal deep holes with bolts in them (red dots), this is where you use your socket extension. Pics below
Step 4: The small dash piece to the left of the steering column
-This will be your warm up for the long dash piece so be ready to learn. There are different clips for these pieces than the doors had (why? I have no idea but I do know these clips SUCK)
-Here is what you are looking for as you look through the fuse panel area:
-You need to take your flat head and jam in under these clips and then twist hard to get these lil bastards off. These are extremely frustrating and you will have to take your time here. Don't worry about breaking these clips, they are damn near indestructible. Try not to lose them to the abyss behind the dash, you will need them again. See pic below:
-Once you have the clips off, push on the metal studs to be the trim out.
-Reverse the process to put the new trim back in BUT DO NOT BUTTON THE DASH BACK UP!!!
-You have to push on both sides of those clips to get them back on.
Step 4: The long dash piece. Seriously, have your patience ready for this one.
-You didn't put the dash back together did you? No? Good.
-See the picture below of where all the clips holding this bad boy in are:
-The left most clip can only accessed by not putting the left side dash back together. Find that left most clip and get the bastard off with the ole insert screw driver and twist method. Try to recover that clip.
-Now you have to take the passenger side dash apart too.
-There is a similar cap to the fuse box cap on the passenger side. Open the passenger door and be careful taking this off
-There are 2 bolts (just like the fuse panel box) that need to be removed
-Open your glove box and take everything out.
-You are going to need to get the glove box to sort of fall down off its perch. To do this you have to pull both sidewalls in at the same time. Pinch where marked in the picture below:
-Alright, one more step before clip removal, there are 2 bolts that have to be removed. One is very obvious with the glove box gone. The other you'll need your extension for. See picture below, the picture is taken sideways:
-With those bolts out, the dash should drop down just enough to give your hand access to the clips for the trim. Take the same approach getting these out as you did before. Try hard to not lose the clips to the dash board monster.
-There are 4 clips you can get at right there, remember this picture? You are going for the 4 right most points.
Stop, get a drink or something, here comes the hardest part of the job.......The center most clip for the long dash piece.
-You are going to use your butter knife or flat head here, insert under between the trim piece and the actual dash and pry gently. Try all angles. The clip will eventually give. Either that or you will break the long trim piece. (I hope you haven't put the hazard surround back in yet)
-See this picture below. The arrows show where you will insert the butter knife and the red dot is where the actual stud is:
-If you are too rough, you'll end up with this:
-Get it out? Great! Break it? Damn.
-Now put the new piece in and put the clips back on. All but the one above the hazard/radio area. If you ever take the trim out again, you don't want to have to deal with that again.
-Alright, time to reverse the whole shabang. Put the passenger side dash back together. Be careful with that one bolt that needs the extension, but a piece of paper towel in between the bolt and the socket head to hold it in place. Put the glove box back up in there, put the 2 bolts back in the side, put the cover back on. Go back over to the driver side, put the lower dash back together, put the knee bolster soft plastic covers back on, 2 more bolts back in the fuse box area, put the cover back on.
Last step: Hazard surround, ash tray cover and shift surround
-Just snap the new hazard surround in, done
-For a 6MT, take off the shift knob and pull the shift surround up as so:
-There are 4 clips underneath that you need to press in to get the leather shift boot out, there are 2 on each side. 2 are shown below:
-Clip the boot into the new surround and install and put the knob back on, done.
-Open the ash tray. There is a black switch that removes the silver metal ash tray, move the switch right and remove the actual ash tray.
-Look at where the ash tray used to be, there are 2 metal black clips that you push to remove the cover, push em down and remove the cover. See the picture below. One clip is broken in my picture:
Install the old one in reverse.
Admire your new interior!
I would like to thank S4tranquility for the write up. I am in no way saying his write up wasn't great, I just think for us less gifted folk, there needed to be some more explanation so I added it. Thanks again and good luck to those who attempt this undertaking. PM me with questions if you like.
I will be adding my own pictures below shortly, so keep reading.
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Originally Posted by KNaudi
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