You dont need to remove the door panel to get your wood off the door. You need to remove th emblem and unscrew the screw thats behind it. The with your palms pull towards the door lock. Its pretty easy to do. I changed all my cherry wood to piano black except I had it painted and polished. Way cheaper then buying a new kit.

Cool

How about the rear doors where there is no LR emblem with a screw behind ?

Also, what’s the deal with the “hockey sticks” either side of the centre consol ??

For the rear doors, and i forgot this on the front doors as well. You have to remove the screw that holds the handle in. Youll see a small circle cover where u can put a small flat head drvier in to open up. Unscrew that then put your palms against the wood and try to slide it towards the back of the door. That black handle piece slides out with the door. The lock has a wire connected to the handle piece which you can just pull away from the panel. It goes back in easy, hard to explain though without you seeing it. The hockey sticks require more work. You have to pull out the ice box or whatever you have there. SO you need to put that flathead into the gap that separates the box from that console piece. Just pop it up a bit and leave it for a minute. You need to pull of the shifter knob by depressing the button and pulling up hard. Dont stop the pull by bringing it back down, ive heard of people smaking their face lol. Then you need to pull all the trim alongside the radio. Get ready to lose some clips into the abyss of that console. In order to get those trim pieces out you must remove the vinyl panels alongside the upper trim. These come out by pulling towards you. Theres a piece on each side. Those gray pieces then just pull out as well. There will be a screw on top of each hockey stick that gets uncovered when you remove that piece. You can then pull that whole console up that covers the cupholders carefully and unplug each of the button wires.
I know all of this sounds like nothing until you see the actual pieces and try it.

Right so, I’m cool with the disassembly of the entire centre consol, in order to have the (rather large) trim panel piece out that is essentially the “hockey sticks”. As I’ve had all that out some weeks ago, when I was doing a bit of exploratory surgery to investigate the ease of fitting an iPod to my car.

But, how do the actual wood finishers come off that panel piece ??

Or as I write this, I’m thinking that perhaps you didn’t need to remove the wood finishers at all, as you say in your post that you re-sprayed & polished your original wood trim, rather than swap it all out.

Right ??

I’ve looked at this before & actually have the LR part numbers for the six pieces of Lined Oak trim required. I know that the “hockey stick” wood trims can be ordered separately, so it means that somehow they can be changed.

But how that’s done I don’t know.

Anyone ??

Edited to add:.........You’re so right about having to be prepared to lose some of the clips

But cheers for the tip on how to remove those two side panels. I did try, but decided to abandon pulling too hard, in case I did further damage. But now at least I know what direction the panels are supposed to go for removal

BTW you can get those clips from your dealer, I got a few spare ones for the next time.

Last edited by Rupert on Tue Jul 10 2007 9:38pm. Edited 1 time in total

Sorry man i forgot to say that once you get that console off youll turn it upside down and theres four torq screws holding those pieces to the console. Very easy once you get it off.

Wow torq screws holding on the wood finishers, that’s a bit over engineered.

But hey !! It’ll make for easy removal.

I wouldn’t mind but I had that panel out & on my bench only a few weeks ago, but never thought of looking underneath. But then at the time I wasn’t thinking I’d need to remove the wood trim.

Oh dear, I had put the thought of swapping my Cherry wood trim for Lined Oak firmly out of my mind, as I had figured you’d need to remove the door panels to remove the trim, which I didn’t want to do.

But as it seems that’s not the case now……………I can feel the wheels turning in my head now.

Cost though is a bit of an issue, as the total for all six Lined Oak trim pieces adds up to nearly EUR 800.00 !!!

A bit steep, particularly since I’ve just lashed out on a set of Stormers, but certainly one for the future.

Thanks jbrac25 for all the tips on how to do the job

No problem Rupert
I might add that your right about that being pretty expensive. I would imagine though that youd have a couple of options. One being that you can sell the cherry wood to someone to recoup most of your money. The second being you can look for someone who can swap it out. Theres a process called hydrographics that can wrap a material which is supposed to give you the exact same look. They can do it to your pieces. Or you can do the piano black paint on all your gray pieces, like what i did. To get all my pieces painted it cost me a total of $350. Good luck in what you do.

Anyone know if the procedures the same if you have the 2008 with Leather instead of wood trim?