How to Restore Your 1988-1992 Third Gen F-Body Arm Rests

The Problem: Above is a picture of my driver side arm rest. If you have a ’88-92 f-body then yours probably looks about the same or worse. I have seen countless ’82-87 f-body’s and their armrests never do this. In fact you can usually find good pairs still in the junkyards or drop $25 on ebay for a pair, BUT they are not correct for a ’88-92 f-body. The reason these arm rests do this, no matter what the color, is because GM starting using a different adhesive in late ’87 (for the 88 model year) to glue the foam padding to the plastic base of the arm rest. Give it a little time and heat and the result is what you see above, the adhesive breaks down and fails and the padding separates from the plastic and the vinyl pulls away giving this "butterfly" look. I live in Texas where we have plenty of heat to spare so both of my ’88 IROC’s have been like this, my others where gray. But, my ’87 sport coupe, as ragged out as it was, the arm rests where like mint. Once your armrests do this they just about become worthless and not to mention are an eye sore to what would be a near perfect interior. So if you are the "do it yourself" kind of guy like I am, have about two hours to spend, and want to keep your original arm rests then read on.

Materials:

1. Torx driver or bit set
2. Package of 2-part JB Weld Epoxy (can be found at any auto parts store) $2.00
3. 1 Piece of cardboard (to mix up epoxy on)
4. 4+ Popsicle sticks (again to mix up epoxy with)
5. 2 or 3 C-Clamps of any kind (they don’t need to be huge)
6. 1 24"X5"X1" piece of wood (if you have to buy it – $3.00 MAX)

Using your torx driver remove the armrest from your door. Take it inside where you have room to work. Open the package of JB Weld and squeeze out about a silver dollar’s worth of each part on to the piece of cardboard. Use a Popsicle stick to mix the two parts together. Once the epoxy is nice and gray and no more white or black is showing, apply it liberally to either the top or the bottom (which ever part you want to do first.) Make sure you get plenty where the lip of the plastic meets the wrap around edge of the padding. Apply the epoxy as deep in between the padding and plastic as you can to help it all adhere evenly.

Once you have put on all the epoxy take your wooden board and kinda roll it on to the vinyl. This requires a few tries to get it all of the vinyl down and straight. Once you have it flat against the vinyl take your clamps and clamp the board down. ***Be careful to keep your fingers and hands clean of epoxy, once its on the vinyl, its not coming off. I made this mistake and thus ended up with a very small epoxy fingerprint on handle. Do not clamp it too tight or you will crack the plastic base of the armrest. Let the epoxy cure over night. Repeat this for each side of each armrest. I did two sides at once as you can see above. If you follow these instructions your armrests SHOULD look like this. My driver side armrest did not come as good because the vinyl had shrunk so much in the sun. The passenger side looks mint!

Disclaimer – The preceding is my documented personal experience. It is not nor shall be passed off as professional instructions. If you mess up your own parts, do not blame me.

Sorry I had to say that.