Fixing Center Console storage in the car

A small little plastic piece had broken off in one of the interior of my vehicles. The absence of this small little piece resulted in an annoying occurrence that the lid which covers the center console was permanently open and could never close. (Please see video below to clear up any confusion).

After inspecting the part in detail, it was really clear and obvious what the problem was, but how to solve it was a different story. I understand the original design and how it would work and why it doesn't now. I made a sketch to show what I understood of the mechanics of this small locking mechanism of how the original engineers intended.

At the end of the door hinge is a latch (shown in red) which slides and locks in place through a rectangular sliding piece (shown in grey). The shape of the latch is convenient to easily slide the rectangular hole catch just by closing the lid. The spring loaded button on the side could then be use to free the latch and open the console.

The present situation is that the plastic latch piece was broken and has lost its trapezoidal shape to catch on the rectangular hole lip. I drew out a cross section of the previous and present situation down below.

The previous scenario show on the left where the latch mechanism was working smoothly. The presently broken situation is shown on the right with an outline of the missing piece that had broken off. Notice how the present shape does not allow the latch to catch on anything and is therefore the reason why the door merely slides the button across but does not lock in place.

 

Here is a close up of the underside of the door cover and the latch mechanism

After cutting a small piece of wood, I drilled out a lollipop shape to accustom a rubber stopper mechanism under the plastic cover              (See next picture for clarification)

I wanted the wood to lay flat against the underside of the plastic cover however there was this rubber end stop in the way. The lollipop milled hole helped work around that problem so the wood could lay flat.

After I had the small piece of wood flat against the underside of the plastic cover, I bent a sturdy nail using a vice at a 90 degree angle and drilled a hole through the U-shaped slot and hammered the nail through.

This is a close up of the progress so far. The wood lays flat against the plastic and I drove the bent nail through a drill hole I made previously using a drill press and the solution is coming together smoothly.

There is a problem though that due to the wood, the plastic cover does not lay flat anymore against the underside of the padded cover :(

To solve this problem, I decided to cut through the plastic cover which holds the padded foam cushion. I would try and mark off the size of the rectangular wooden piece and get to work.

Using the drill press I made a series of holes outlining the dimensions of the rectangular wooden piece.

With a simple heavy duty flat head screw driver or a chisel you can hammer out the plastic between holes and remove the plastic rectangular chunk.

This is the rectangular plastic piece removed via a crude drill and hammer method

Now you can see that the plastic cover lays down flat and will not warp or stick out with the wooden insert underneath on the corner.

Now you can screw the padded cover to the spring loaded piano hinge before placing the plastic cover back on.

With the bent nail in place the latch would work as long as you hold the button down and let go when the lid is shut. To return full functionality which would include the passive shut and lock ability, I would need to weld a smooth rectangular piece to the nail to slide the rectangular latch back and over the catch.

This is an outline of a welded metal piece that would work perfectly and return full functionality as the original