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Making a Gear Vanity Strip

The original automatic gear lever strip in the center consoles woodtrim is made of hard plastic, with some ridges. This tends to get brittle and crack with time. Finally ending up as several pieces. I decided I wanted to make a better, more lasting, and better looking one. Remove the wood trim from the center console. Please refer to this article which covers the removal procedure.

Now remove the original strip by pushing it all to either side, which lets the end of the strip be guided out of it´s track. See further down for more pictures that can be of help in the removal process.

newstrip_backsideconsole
Remove the old strip by accumulating it all on one side and then pull out through upper arrow marking

Don´t throw away the pieces of the old strip. Try and put it next to eachother and use as a template for a new plastic strip. I found some thin flexible grey plastic at a local hardware store. I cut this to match the old strip size (width and length). Take care to make a new hole for the gearlever at the same place as the old strip (with the same diameter of course).

Now I found some thin black cloth which I glued onto one side of the grey plastic. I put it to pressure while drying, and afterwords cut the cloth around the strip edges like so.

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Cloth glued on and cut to fit new strip

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Other side with cloth

Now the new strip has to be put back in.

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Sliding the new strip into one of the rolls

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Sliding the new strip into the track

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Checking fit

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The finished look

Notice the hole. I cut the cloth with a knife and slided the gearlever through it when assembling the centerconsole woodtrim again. This made a quite good luxury look as the cloth has some small pattern of lines on it which didn´t show up too good in this picture.

 

 
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