1987 Corvette Arm Rest Repair
To close the door, you need to pull on the arm rest piece. This is a plastic expando- foam covered part (like so many of the interior pieces in an 1987 corvette). Unfortunately the structural portion of this arm rest is made of plastic. You pull on the plastic piece every time you close the door! The Arm Rest Trim piece was discontinued by GM in 1996.
To remove the trim piece you need to remove the 2 screws in the bottom of the door pull hole. Push down on the trim piece and outwards at the same time. There are 2 tabs as shown below. The door trim piece is removed in this photo, I'm just holding it alongside the door panel so you can see what the tabs look like and where they are located on the panel.. They grab on the inside, towards the center of the car, so you need to push outwards to unhook them.
Front Holding Tab:
Rear holding Tab:
And this is why I think the 1987 Corvette GM armrest design was pretty DUMB! They used some brittle plastic as the structural portion of the door which is pulled time and time again to close the door. After 15 or so years the plastic fatigues and cracks into many pieces resulting in a floppy, saggy, lousy fitting arm rest door trim piece.
Another 'before' picture:
Here is Greg fabbing up an aluminum insert piece for me:
After this picture, Greg trimmed the sharp corners and drilled out the 2 holes for the plastic under side to slip through (the height spacers) on the underside of the arm rest trim piece. Here it is "installed". I used commercial double sided adhesive (from McMaster-Carr I think - it's been floating around the Garage for a while). I used it to piece the brittle plastic back together and adhere to the foam parts. It actually held pretty well! I also coated the aluminum piece with the tape. In the front, where the armrest bends upwards, I was able to get the edge to just tuck inside a little notch near the solid part where the front tab is located. Not shown in this photo is the black edge I put on the aluminum with a black sharpie permanent pen - just incase the aluminum is a bit visible when installed.
This is the handy gizmo ZIP sells to replace the factory 'Arm Rest Insert'. This piece from Zip is shaped like a box - with four sides. The side on the interior of the car is tall and is what you pull against to close the door. The original factory GM piece is a 3 sided box, and you pull on the plastic arm rest trim piece. The GM piece is open (no sides) on the edge you pull to close the door. Here's a link to the ZIP store. Part X-471 "Armrest Savers"
And here it is installed. You can see part of the tall piece which I can now pull against to shut the door, instead of pulling on the arm rest trim piece.
Here's the final result: It's not perfect, but it's a WHOLE lot better and it will do, while I hunt for a better condition original one!
Enjoy! ~Juliet