Project 300ZX [5] - Shift knob / e-brake handle

As you could see in the initial pictures I took of the car, the shift knob, e-brake handle and their boots were in a terrible condition. There's no way you can repair that, so replacement was the only option.

The shift knob had some nasty scratches and its cover was missing (I think it originally came wrapped in leather but now it was only the soft-plastic inner knob). The boot is synthetic leather and it was peeled everywhere.

Those scratches on the knob come from a previous removal I think. The knob screws to the shaft, but to keep it in place, Nissan originally glues it with some blue Loctite. I've read that it's pretty hard to take it off; you need to wrap the knob in towels and then apply as much force as you can to break the glue with a pipe wrench or something. I assume this damage came from that process. I'm glad someone else did that ugly job for me, because I was able to simply unscrew the knob with my bare hands. I'm not sure why they did it and still this knob was in place, but anyway.

The e-brake handle was wrapped in leather but it was in a pretty bad shape. The boot was also leather and as you can see, it couldn't be saved either. Now this handle is a bitch to take off. I ended up cutting through the stitching, removing the leather and then cutting through the soft plastic inner handle, effectively destroying it and leaving the bare metal core. That plastic inner handle, I found out, was glued to the metal so it would have been very difficult to slide it off. Here's what the handle looked like after I took it off. You can see the plastic inner handle with a cut down its center:

So what would I replace these parts with? There are plenty of alternatives, some colorful versions and some others more stock-looking. A popular option seems to be black leather with red stitching. I kind of liked it but ultimately I wanted to stick to the stock look, so I ordered black on black from some provider on ebay at a total of $130 plus $10 shipping for the shift knob, the e-brake handle and both boots, all in nice leather.

To be able to replace the boots, the center console has to be removed, and I took the opportunity to clean them real good. Years of dust, spilled sugary beverages and who knows what other kinds of random crap had accumulated there so I took apart all the pieces.

Just above the stereo there are two screws that have to be removed, and above the two vents there are two more. There's a missing plastic trim piece that covers that section above the stereo, and two plastic covers also missing that hide the screws above the vents. They are available for around $32 total. It's a lot for three small pieces of plastic but what the hell. I'm not getting them now but eventually I'll have to bite the bullet.

In the following picture you can see that center stack cover piece removed, which includes the two center vents. The back section of the center console is already removed; you can see the rubber seal for the shift mechanism. Under that outer seal there is another, inner rubber seal. I took them both out and cleaned them good.

The shift boot is attached to the center console, and the e-brake boot is attached to the armrest trim peace that goes behind that and to the right side. The next picture shows the center console where you can see, left to right, the connections for the suspension setting selector and side mirrors, the round hole where the lighter goes, the hole where the ashtray goes, the metal bracket that holds the shift boot in place, and a plastic bowl that goes below the ashtray and lighter assembly, along with its light.

The new shift boot comes with small holes in the places where both the screws go, and some plastic guides go through the metal bracket (those black dots you can see along the bracket in the previous picture). So I had to enlarge the holes in the leather (I used progressively larger philips screwdrivers for the job), and then stretch the boot to align the holes. Pretty straightforward.

Then comes the e-brake boot. It is attached to the armrest trim piece, which can be seen in the next picture (the long rectangular hole at the bottom is where the metal bracket holding the e-brake boot was):

So this is how the old e-brake boot looked after I took it off:

The new boot also had small holes where the mounting spots needed to be. Only in this case, the holes needed to be enlarged into slits where some tabs in the bracket had to be inserted. I did this with a sharp pocket knife and lots of care not to cut the slits too wide...

In the next picture you can see some of the tabs already inserted into the slits on the boot, in the lower section:

Again, no rocket science but some care is required to properly align the leather and place the slits. Here are some pictures of the armrest assembly with the center console attached, and the two boots in place: