Steering Column Cowl Replaced

As a part of an ongoing refresh of the car's interior, I set about replacing the surface damaged lower steering column cowl. For those that don't know what that is, it's the lower half of the plastic trim that the indicator stalk and steering wheel rake adjust lever protrude from, the same plastic trim below where you stick your key in the ignition (if that hasn't helped all will become clear in the images later).

When I bought the car I hadn't really noticed it, as you tend to look at the car from the driving position. It was only when I did a thorough clean of the interior, after buying the car, that I saw it from the passenger side. The only reason that I can think of for the damage to this trim panel, is that someone had hung an air freshener from the indicator stalk and it had melted the plastic.

I noted it needed swapping as it looked hideous, but kept forgetting as it wasn't in plain sight to me as the driver.

Anyway, it finally got to me enough for me to look into getting it sorted. I jumped on eBay and ordered a replacement second hand OEM trim piece, for around £10 posted, that I was hopefully going to do a straight swap with. However, when the parts arrived they also melted in the same place. I had ordered the top half too just in case I damaged the top replacing the lower.

Off to Halfords I went to pick up some primer and satin black spray cans.

Before I could do any prep or painting the trim panels had to be stripped of all sound proofing etc, of which there was more than I imagined there would be.

As there were surface defects on the parts they needed sanding back to a smooth surface prior to painting. For the sanding I used wet and dry ranging in grit level from 220 to 1200. The 220 was used to get the major scuffs and melted parts cleaned up then I finished off with the 1200.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the spraying process, but I can explain what I did.

I applied very thin layers, almost a dusting, of primer. It took 4 coats before it was covered. After the primer was applied I left the parts to full set, a few months in fact as I just didn't get the time to finish the job. I'm sure a couple of days would have sufficed though.

As with the primer I dusted on the satin black. It looks odd when you do it this way and you think "how is this ever going to produce a decent finish?" but trust the process and it does. After 3 coats it was almost covered, just a few tricky areas left that I blew in specifically.

I then left it in the July heat wave to fully harden off. For the final touch I washed the part in cold water and dried it off, to remove any loose paint or dirt particles. I refitted the sound proofing to the lower trim then set about fitting it.

Changing the lower half of the trim was fairly easy, lower the trim shown below to give you a bit more access to the cowl trim, then pop the pin out of the middle of the two large round fixing pegs, then they just fall out with a bit of jiggling.

Taking a screw driver I removed the screw from the upper trim, which sits in the recess on the top surface behind the steering wheel. It is then a case of maneuvering the trim panels (upper and lower) until you unclip the clips joining the two halves (this is quite tricky). Refitting is just a case of reversing the above.

Despite painting up the replacement top half, when it came to fitting it I gave it a miss to avoid any unnecessary frustration. The original top half was in quite good condition so I just left it attached.

Overall I'm very happy with the results, although the newly painted part does look noticeably nicer than the rest of the trim now (but I'd rather it that way than before!) The satin black Halfords paint is a near enough match to the standard trim for me to recommend you use the same if you need to spray any interior parts yourself.