Rear armrest disassembly

[Cubieman]

Looking for any tips on disassembling the rear armrest so I can replace the middle most plastic trim piece and cannot find any great DIY's. Feels like I'm going to break something so any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: Spoke to soon...found 2 more screws hidden by the rear insulation allowing the removal of the armrest.

[Slideways]

Once you remove the armrest from the door panel, there should be a bunch of tabs that you can see from inside the armrest. If it is anything like the front armrest, the difficulty is that the tabs go in different directions, so you need to release them one by one while using a pry tool separate the bottom from the top.

[Thoglan]

If you are talking about separating the black underside from the top painted section, it is a huge ball ache. Have to pull like a MF and be super gentle with the tabs. Not the kind of thing you can do endlessly as eventually the tabs will just break. As slideways said there are tabs that go in opposite directions and not all of them are visable from the open side of the arm rest. Just have to take your time and be gentle but also the opposite of gentle. When I was refinishing mine I just bought a back up set of armrests incase all the tabs got wrecked pulling them apart.

[Cubieman]

I see what you guys mean, wow what a pain.

I may just dremel off the tabs I can get to I don't break the lower most plastic piece. I would like to save these carbon wrapped pieces so I can re-paint and keep as spares, these are not inexpensive parts unfortunately.

[Thoglan]

I see what you guys mean, wow what a pain.

I may just dremel off the tabs I can get to I don't break the lower most plastic piece. I would like to save these carbon wrapped pieces so I can re-paint and keep as spares, these are not inexpensive parts unfortunately.

It is but it is doable, I wouldn't go cutting anything. You can get them from any coupe at a scrap yard for close to nothing. That's what I did and used the ones from the scrap car to repaint incase I ruined/broke them.

[Thoglan]

Side note if you're looking for a good paint match for the factory titanshadow finish, GM8573 seems to be a near perfect match. Attached is a photo of my repainted handles next to a brand new dash trim piece from BMW.

[y2k_o__o]

Side note if you're looking for a good paint match for the factory titanshadow finish, GM8573 seems to be a near perfect match. Attached is a photo of my repainted handles next to a brand new dash trim piece from BMW.

The results look really great !!! How many coat have you put?
Did you put primer after sanding?

[bavarian3]

The results look really great !!! How many coat have you put?
Did you put primer after sanding?

TexaZ3

[WestBankM4]

I'm not sure that door handle matches the dash pieces in those photos, one's certainly more bronze and the other silver. It's close but my eyes can pick that up, nice job on the refinish though, looks like you prepped well and took your time between coats.

edit: Maybe it's the lighting, I mean it's definitely close.