Has anyone pulled the cover off of a skipass armrest?

[iansane]

I picked up a skipass rear seat but it looks like the armrest frame is broken just past the hinge bolts. I presume the frame is metal so I wanted to pull the cover off, weld it back up and reinstall. Does anyone have any insight into how to get the cover off?

[Cletonius]

I've got one in my storage unit, I'm going there this weekend, I'll pull the leather off and check... It's ripped already anyways

[iansane]

Thanks man. Appreciate it.

[Cletonius]

Ok so here's how it goes, at least for mine.

I sacrificed a little bit because I bought this seat to recover...

At the back of the armrest there's a seam where the ends are poked in. Pull them out and gently peel the leather back, it's just clipped together. The thing slides off kinda like a sock, I had to cut a little bit because I didn't have the tools with me to remove the armrest mechanism. It was all metal once I could see it though. My seat is an old one with a metal frame (and rear headrests) and hair matting in the cushions. The construction may differ if yours is from a newer car

[iansane]

I finally got around to attempting this again. I had previously pulled one of the flaps out of seam where it was stuffed. It 'felt' like the second flap was attached in some fashion. After pulling on it some more, smoothly of course, I got the second flap out and it slid off just like you said, Josh.

Extracting the frame from the foam was an absolute pain in the ass. It wasn't neccesarily difficult, just time consuming because you couldn't just pull the foam or it would tear off in random chunks. I was usually a bare razorblade at first but found that a solid gasket scraper worked best. just like this;


After I got the foam completely off it was fairly easy to see the breaks. It obviously had been broken for a long time and almost had broken completely in half. A little welding and now I'm going to reglue the foam and stuff it back into the cover.

[Cletonius]

Excellent! I would glue the foam with sprayed contact cement. If you end up needing some new foam shoot me a message and I can get you the appropriate grade.