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Dash/Steering Wheel trim teardown

13K views 13 replies 6 participants last post by  Psychomidgit 
#1 ·
Hi y'all. I decided one day that I wanted a different look for the interior of my cruze. So I kept going to the junk yards and the dealer until I got all my extra parts, painted them/got them wrapped, and then started the install. So far I have the dash done, and here's how I did it. Please bare in mind that I took pics when I did reassembly so it will look like I'm taking the green pieces out, but it's actually the opposite. Also, this is being done on a manual, autos will be a little different, and note that the steering wheel was turned upside down and the battery was disconnected prior to this about 45 mins. When doing this I used plastic interior tools to protect the parts and finish.



The first thing I did was put my plastic pry under the chrome trim around the shift boot. The best place to do that is on the side facing the heater controls. It will come up very easy and look like this



You will then be able to pull the surrounding trim up to pop the bottom loose, then away from the dash to disconnect it completely, this is the bottom of that piece.



You can then disconnect that switch to move the piece out of the way. From there I moved to the airbag cover.



There are two bolts that have to be removed, they are



and



Once that's done you pop this piece out



I did that to give me the ability to have a starting point when popping the cover off. This is what it looked like afterwards



I then moved to the trim around the radio. I started lightly popping it out on the passenger side top, to the middle, then the driver's side top.



To get the vinyl/cloth piece next to the middle vents now will be too easy. Stick your fingers behind it and pop I right out.



Next I moved to the driver's vent/trim. First, like the other side, I popped the flap.



I then stuck my fingers behind the trim and popped the four clips out slowly and surely.

I then moved to the steering wheel, which was placed in the upside down position before disconnecting the battery.



Being that this was done on the car, I could not get a good picture of this, but, in order to remove the airbag, on the back of the wheel are two holes with slots. I used 2 allen wrenches to put in the holes, push through the foam and pull the allen wrenches outward along the slots provided which will release the clip and pop the airbag out. Once it drops out, you will see this (on a 2013 anyway) only the orange clip will be pushed in all the way.



to disconnect the airbag you will need to pull the orange clip up, then disconnect the wire. On 2012's and 2011's, I believe that there are two clips, but the exact same idea. Your wheel should then look like this.



From here you disconnect both switches on the wheel. You would then start at the actual bottom of the steering wheel trim and gently pop it out, then carefully to each switch. Once done with that your wheel will look like this



Now your wheel and dash should be de-trimmed and reassembly is the exact opposite. This is how mine turned out when done



 
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#2 ·
So what did you do differently to the center stack? That looks like the factory silver.
 
#4 ·
Since I wanted the switch bezels for the door and wheel silver, we painted them and all of the already silver pieces a Mercedes metallic silver.
 
#5 ·
#7 ·
APCruze: Thank you! I will when I finish it, either Sunday or Thursday, I did my shifter assembly today, and thanks for adding the link, there's a lot of good info in your write up.

rayray718:Thank you! I actually went to a junk yard up here (Anchorage) and got all the dash trim pieces off of the LS model which were already vinyl, I took them with me when I went to Phoenix. I acquired 4 door panels there since the junk yard refused to sell the door panels without the doors up here (they wanted $2200, lol), and stripped the trim off of them. Only one of the door panels had the cloth trim. I then took all the vinyl pieces plus the one cloth one to a place and got them all re-wrapped in the green vinyl.
 
#8 ·
by chance while doing the fabric on the airbag overlays do you remember how the chrome rings on the AC vents came out? whether like the center ac vents there are clips from behind, or they just pop right out?
 
#9 · (Edited)
They pop out forward, then turn the vents about 90 degrees and slide them completely out. Once you get the vent assembly out then you should be able to separate the ring but I don't know because I didn't actually try, but if I remember correctly they look like if you do it slowly and patiently you could get them off.
 
#10 ·
Thanks that will be a great help, planning a new project to step the I terror up one more step.
 
#11 ·
Sweet, you'll have to post it for me to see!
 
#12 ·
#13 ·
Great Pictures of how to access the pieces.

What type of material did you use, and how did you go about attaching it to the pieces? I know this sounds dumb, but for someone who is not in the upolstery business some tricks would be appreciated? Is it glue on the backside of the piece or some type of fastener?

Looks good.
 
#14 ·
Thank you! It's vinyl, and I actually had someone do the vinyl work, it's the only thing I didn't do. But they stripped the pieces, refoamed it, and then laid the vinyl over it. Also, they used some type of glue style adhesive.
 
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