Do It Yourself - Fix Your Floppy Astray Door

[Junkman2008]

Well, I got a fix for you! This is one of those annoying little issues that a lot of guys are experiencing but don't know that it is an easy fix. I almost bought a new piece!

I wouldn't have fixed mine if a mod that I was doing hadn't went haywire. Just when I thought I had graduated from "shade tree mechanic" status, I got humbled by one of my typical car "touching" experiences. It seems like every time I touch the car, it becomes a Broadway production. The only thing that goes right is putting in some gas. Do the repair Gods hate me?

I upgraded my taillights to Halo's and immediately got the good ol' hyper-flashing (where the turn signals flash at a very rapid rate, just like they do when you blow a running bulb in the front of the car), and thus installed the hyper-flash cable that I purchased from Richard at Corvette Enhancements (he also sells the Halo's). Everything was going just fine until I couldn't get the knee bolster seated correctly. I was laying upside down fussing with this thing and then PLINK! Something fell out of the dash and I didn't have a clue where it came from.

Damn, damn, damn....

I knew that it was one of those clips that hold a screw in place but like I said, I didn't know where it came from so I decided to remove the piece that surrounds the radio and AC. Geeez! I didn't know that was going to be another adventure! When I did finally get that off, I heard another blink! Something else had fallen off and I didn't know where it came from either. It's now 3:00 AM and my interior looks like my car was stolen.

So I broke out some music and decided to clean up all this stuff since I had it apart because it looked like Big Foot was my car's previous owner. That's when I noticed why my ash tray lid wouldn't stay closed. Check out the picture below.



Because the spring is all jacked up and not seated correctly, all the change I have in my ashtray ends up in my parking brake leather covering when I do a jack rabbit take off. The lid use to stay closed until I let the dealer work on my car (that's another story). The lid will open and close but when closed, it would slightly pop open for no reason. Now I see why. I reseated the spring and now the door stays closed the way it is supposed to. See the picture below:



Now that spring is seated correctly, I can take off and my change stays where its supposed to! Oh, and I figured out where all the pieces went that fell out of the car. I was kinda proud of myself after that!

The Junkman