A Fox body Mustang’s interior can say a lot about the car and it’s one of the easiest areas to start with the restoration. Most armrests won’t stay closed, Lord-knows-what sticky stuff inside where cassette tapes once lived and worn out pad. This is a “quick fix” and here’s how I did mine.
Restoration parts
For the most part when I’m restoring these parts – I purchase the Console Trim Panel Kit from LMR. They have plenty of products to help with the Foxbody interior restoration. Finding mint used parts is getting harder to find, thankfully we have great aftermarket support for the fox body Mustang!
Taking it apart & cleaning
The armrest is rather easy to disassemble, a few screws and two clips keeping the pins in place. Below, a disassembled fox body armrest – ready for prep!
Next you will want to clean the plastic and vinyl pad with some dish soap to remove any grease (literally elbow grease in this case). I use a plastic dishwashing scrubber thing to get into the cracks.
SEM paint
If you have a Smoke Grey interior, the SEM Presidio color is a perfect match! Otherwise, you can order (I believe is SEM color-matched paint) from LMR. You will want to make sure the material is dry and follow the instructions for the plastic and vinyl prep before painting. I applied a very thin layer of paint as the plastic wasn’t in that bad of shape.
Assembly
This requires more patience than skill, hopefully, this post will be of help. It’s a bit of a pain to insert the arm-rest into the support while the plastic cover is on it (Tip: Don’t fasten the support cover until last).
The spring-loaded armrest pad lid button should be assembled like this in your hand to slide it into position – the easiest way I found to do this.
Insert the plastic bushings (the ones with 2 steps) into the arm rest bin before attempting to drop the bin into the metal support bracket.
Below is a view of how the bushings are installed within the metal support bracket.
When applying the clips, you will need a large C-clamp to tighten the metal support bracket. I didn’t have one big enough so I improvised with this contraption. You will notice a few washers, flat and “spring-loaded” which will help keep the armrest in place.
Once finished, it’s a nice little detail to the interior restoration.
Hopefully, this post inspired you to start restoring your fox body interiors! Post your mint interiors on the Foxstang Facebook page!
