Rear Door Arm Rest Repair

Stock FSJ Tech Area
Post Reply
User avatar

Topic author
81Cherokee Laredo
Posts: 67
Joined: Sat Nov 10, 2012 3:20 pm
Location: Tuscola TX

Rear Door Arm Rest Repair

Post by 81Cherokee Laredo »

I'm updating and moving this over from the mothership. When I first got my 89 Wagoneer the rear door arm rests were shot. This made closing the rear doors from inside a real chore since the later wags, I beleive 89 and up dont have the door pulls anymore. Like most of us on here I searched the parts section and bought a few arm rests from fellow members. Some were good, some were just as bad as mine and some were worse. After I bought one from Florida that looked and smelled like it came out of a swamp, I had had enough and decided I was going to come up with a solution to fix the ones I had.

Root Cause

Here's what broken armrests look like when removed, the holes in back are broken up and the screws go most of the way, if not all the way through.
Image

The above holes have verry little to do with holding you armrests in place, the real problem lies underneath. We need to take apart the arm rest to see the true problem. Remove the 4 screws holding the back piece on and gently pry the back off the armrest. You should end up with something like this
Image

Here is the true problem, you can see in the above pic the plastic cup which holds the head of the fasteners are no longer intact. This is caused by over tourqing the fasteners(I'm guilty of this myself). The right side one is completly gone and the left is not far behind, there is still one post on the left side(see below). These posts contact the back plate and give support to the cup and help distribute the tourqe.
Image
Last edited by 81Cherokee Laredo on Fri Jul 18, 2014 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
81 Cherokee Laredo 360/727/219 - SOA/SF Inwk - 4.56 D44/AMC20 35 Cooper's - J20 Steering Box
83 Cherokee W/T - Katy - Long term project
89 Grand Wagoneer 360/727/229 - 31 X 10.50
User avatar

Topic author
81Cherokee Laredo
Posts: 67
Joined: Sat Nov 10, 2012 3:20 pm
Location: Tuscola TX

Re: Rear Arm Rest Repair

Post by 81Cherokee Laredo »

The Fix

The FIX, I determined is to rebuild the cup, I decided that sheet metal would be what was needed for the repair.

Step one. remove the remaining bits of plastic. I cut the remaining post off and removed the remnants of the cup, leaving the vinyl in place. Needs to look like the right side for the repair.
Image

Step two. on to the repair. The best place to do the modification is on the backing panel.
Image

Ithe above pic you can see the posts with the screw recess, they also support the cup oposite the posts removed in step 1 and have been intact on all the armrests I've taken apart. I decided to use these as attachment points for the sheet metal plates I fabricated.

Image

Image

I also used the flat area across from the posts as attachment points. The plates are thin sheet metal(22ga) that I cut, bent, drilled, grinded and cursed at. the rivets are aluminum. The top one is pretty straight forward, the oposite side with the big hole is a bit more challenging to fabricate.
81 Cherokee Laredo 360/727/219 - SOA/SF Inwk - 4.56 D44/AMC20 35 Cooper's - J20 Steering Box
83 Cherokee W/T - Katy - Long term project
89 Grand Wagoneer 360/727/229 - 31 X 10.50
User avatar

Topic author
81Cherokee Laredo
Posts: 67
Joined: Sat Nov 10, 2012 3:20 pm
Location: Tuscola TX

Re: Rear Arm Rest Repair

Post by 81Cherokee Laredo »

Results

Mocking up the backing plate on the door. The armrest needs to be attached before this point and will be held on to the backing plate by the 4 fasteners removed in Root Cause. You can now see how the plates replace the cups and hold the backing plate to the door.
Image

Here's the Armrest all back together.the plates are completly hidden from veiw, giving a stock apperence.
Image

Image

And heres the final resuls. I used a washer on the attaching screws to help pinch the vinyl between the washer and the plates.
Image

If anybody wants to read the original post, it can be found here http://www.ifsja.org/forums/vb/showthread.php?t=158918
81 Cherokee Laredo 360/727/219 - SOA/SF Inwk - 4.56 D44/AMC20 35 Cooper's - J20 Steering Box
83 Cherokee W/T - Katy - Long term project
89 Grand Wagoneer 360/727/229 - 31 X 10.50

letank
Posts: 4010
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:16 pm
Location: SF bay area

Re: Rear Door Arm Rest Repair

Post by letank »

thank you for the idea, being a rainy day, it was time to spend a couple of hours.... I used one of those framing brackets, a bit overkill and harder to bend...

step one

Image

step 2 later
Michel
74 wag (349 Kmiles... parked, next step is a rust free body)
85 Gwag (229 Kmiles... the running test lab)

twisted frame
Posts: 637
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2013 9:41 am
Location: Massachusetts

Re: Rear Door Arm Rest Repair

Post by twisted frame »

Very nice repair. Thanks for posting!
73 J4000. 360, MC 2100, T18A, D20, stock closed knuckle Dana 44 front, 60-2 rear. Warn Lock-O-Matics, Warn/Belleview electric winch, true duals with glasspacks, old-school front diff skid plate, used 265 Toyos on 16" AR wheels.

candymancan
Posts: 3652
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2016 11:32 pm

Re: Rear Door Arm Rest Repair

Post by candymancan »

I just used a long bolt. Washers and nut to bolt it down.. then the added length screws into the door itself.

That is until i found like 5 wagoneers over the years and took the door pulls that were good lol
1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9L Limited 219k
1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0 I6 laredo 430k
1990 Jeep Grand Wagoneer 155k
1976 Jeep J10.. 85k(repaired)
Post Reply