Console Repair

14 November 2006

Console Repair ...

Replaced Emergency Brake Handle

Rubber Boot (Dust Cover)

                                                                                                        Project Completed: October 10, 2003

5 December 2004:     NOTE - The boot has torn again, and pulled loose from 1 or 2 of the mounting studs, after 14 months of use ... the tear is on the driver's side of the boot, near the top - it's about 1 1/2" long. It appears that the cut-out on the slot in the console has a sharp edge on the underside. The emergency brake handle is fairly wide near this area, and when you pull up on the handle, it forces the boot against the sharp edge on the console. I'd recommend rounding/smoothing the underside edges, if you replace your boot.

I'll be pulling mine back out, but I really doubt that the plastic studs will stand-up to another melt-down. I may install a leather boot, this time.

28 December 2004:     You can see how the leather boot looks, near the bottom of this page. Bryan's ("Tabres") '96 Cobra now owns one, as of today!

9 January 2005: I have my boot installed too. Photos are near the bottom of this page. I have a new Web Page ... "Leather E-Brake Handle Boot" , on this installation - this is better than trying to repair the OEM rubber seal. I think it will last a long time.

Like a lot of other Cobras, the rubber boot on the emergency brake handle had deteriorated, and torn. It looked pretty shabby, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. I had seen other Cobra owners post messages on the Cobra Forums, telling of how they had removed the seal, bought a new one, and could not get any kind of bonding agent to hold it in place.

The console is made up of many pieces, and they are joined together by small plastic studs/posts and holes in the adjoining piece. The studs/posts pass through the holes, are heated up, and sort of melted - locking the two pieces together. Well, the rubber boot is the same way. In the photos, you'll see the rubber seal, the retaining plate (plastic), and the studs/posts on the console itself. The seal mounts on the studs/posts, then the retaining plate, then the studs/posts are heated up and bent over or smashed flat, to hold everything together.

I applied heat to the end of the post/stud with a soldering gun (plan on throwing the tip away), and used a cotter pin extractor to pry up on the retaining plate while the plastic was softening up. Try not to distort the posts/studs. At a certain point, the retaing plate will pop up, off the post/stud. The plate is plastic too, so you need to be careful - the hole will enlarge, and be difficult to reinstall.

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Parts of the plastic from the posts/studs melted off, onto the hole in the plate. I went back and heated them up slowly and tried to scrape the plastic off, to reuse in reshaping the posts/studs. Again, be careful - you'll be enlarging the hole in the plate, and it may get so large that the remainder of the reshaped post/stud won't be large enough to melt over the edge of the plate and lock it in place. The holes in the plate can be trimmed up using a razor blade and small flat file. If the plate is returned to the original thickness, reinstalling it will easier.

Once all the posts/studs had been pulled through the plate, I went back and gently heated up the remaining portion of the posts/studs, and molded the plastic with the cotter pin extractor, trying to reshape the form of a post/stud. You have to work the plastic quickly, and heat it slowly, trying to form a shape that the new rubber seal, and the retaining plate will fit over (as much as possible).