Wayne Smith

Inspired by a recent cup holder thread I took a new look at the damage inflicted on my center console from transporting my grandkids. The carbon fiber had cracked and the ash tray lid was off.

5 minute epoxy re-secured the lid. The lid was a bit warped so I held it in position for the drying time and used a knife to trim the overflow. That was easy.

But the bright cracks were another matter. After some thought I used some acrylic cement with an applicator. This cement finds cracks and fills them. It is very thin so multiple fills were required. It wipes clean with a rag so taping along the cracks was not necessary.

Perfect? No. The part has shape changed a bit where the cracks occurred. But it is a big improvement.

Now to see how well it holds up.

Patrick E

Nice work!

Bruce In Philly

2009 C2S 174K

Nice... took some patience eh?

Peace
Bruce in Philly (now Atlanta)

halo777

Nice work!

Petza914

Definitely better.

rico_fafs

@Wayne Smith A year later, how has it held up?

okbarnett

all the cf parts are coated with a thick coat of acrylic urethane clear coat. So if you can take the whole part off , and if its possible to sand the crack out or sand all the way to the cf, then you can re clear coat it. I did a nose spoiler that had a big hole in it, I pushed the cf strands back to shape and filled it from behind with clear epoxy. Then clear coated it, and you could hardly tell there had ever been a scratch on it.

jayzbird

I’m not OP but did something similar. I don’t think it’s urethane but epoxy resin used to fill the cracks, then sanded down and polished. That’s the second part of the job. The first part is re-gluing the usually lifted/warped trim pieces. I used regular epoxy glue for this and it did not hold up. Too brittle and too much force from the misshaped CF overlay.

if I were to try this again, I’d first likely use a heat gun to reshape the warped CF back closer to proper position so the glue is not working so hard to hold it in place. And substitute a bonder that has more plasticity or at least a better epoxy than the harbor freight stuff I used. There are some recommendations if you search on CF trim repair.

Wayne Smith

It did not hold up adequately. The cracks eventually reappeared. I have not taken the time to attempt additional repair, but now you've got me thinking about it.

aasilvia

So I too am a new owner and dealing with this failing carbon fiber center console in my 2006 997.1. The car came with the original sticker which showed this to be a 2700 option along with a 1500 option for CF trim on the vents.

Anyway, it sounds like repairing/diy doesn't really work on the console. Has anyone ever brought this to a repair shop to do the work? Here locally in San Diego there's a shop called 2mAutowerks that seems to do this type of work regularly

Otherwise, I guess the only other option is to find a suitable OEM replacement (non CF).