DIY - Install Overhead Console

[Mazikowski]

For a while now I've been trying to figure out the best place to keep my sunglasses and/or night driving glasses (the only downside of me getting eye lasers) when I don't need them. For a while I kept them in their cases in the glove box but that took up too much room and was inconvenient to access while driving. My husband's Genesis Coupe has one of those nifty overhead consoles with the fold down bit for this exact purpose and I thought "why didn't we get one of those?"



So I popped the dome light out and did some measuring. Turns out there's a lot of room between the front part of the headliner and the center support on the roof! Armed with my measurements, a screwdriver, and some wire cutters I made my way to the local pick-n-pull yard to rummage through some cars.

After several attempts to find cars that had these type of consoles (preferably with integrated map lights), pulling them down, measuring them, finding out most of them didn't stand a chance of fitting, and repeating I came up with three options. The contenders were one from a 350Z, one from an early '00s Honda Odyssey, and one from an second gen Tiburon. I pulled them out, cut the pigtails for the connectors, and headed to the counter. I wound up spending less than $25 for all of this ($3 to get in and $19.xx for the parts).

The consoles from the Z and the Odyssey were beige and the one from the Tiburon was black. In addition to saving myself the effort of sanding down and painting them, the overall shape of the Tiburon's console was the best match. The Odyssey console was a close runner up, however, because it had Homelink buttons built in.

The particular Tiburon I amputated the console from was a non-sunroof model so it has blanks where the sunroof buttons would otherwise have been... more on this later.









With the help of this thread by @nalc () I pulled the headliner and got to work.

The fit was almost perfect.



The first step was to cut down the foam block between the headliner and the roof.



After that was out of the way I made a rough template out of a file folder, marked where I needed to cut (making sure I would be leaving the little white clip at the front to hold the headliner up), and made a big hole in my headliner. I used one of those oscillating cutters to cut through the plastic bits and a utility knife made quick work of the headliner itself. If I were to do it again, I would have just cut out the chunk of headliner from the donor car to use as a template, but whatevs.





I checked the fit and realized there were a couple little plastic tabs that poked up too high.



Off they went!



Adventure continued below...

[Mazikowski]

Since the Tiburon console was originally held in with screws and didn't have any clips in front, I had to improvise. As serendipity would have it, the screw holes sat right against the structural bar at the front of the roof. Using a drill bit with a depth stop on it (if you don't have one of those, wrapping a bunch of tape around the bit at the desired position is fine) made two holes slightly smaller than a couple of screws I had in my trusty Bucket O' Screws™. That did the trick!







Now my sunglasses have a home!



The fit is ALMOST perfect, except the very tips of the back corners have the tiniest of gaps between the plastic and the headliner. Since everything's black up there you can hardly notice it unless you feel it, though.



For the lights, it just so happened that the connector from the Tiburon and the connector for the BRZ's dome light use the same size pins. I checked which wires did what using a 9V battery and seeing if lights came on, de-pinned the connector on the BRZ and stuck the pins in the corresponding locations on the Tiburon connector. Plugged that in and I had light!



Remember those switch blanks? I bet you thought I would never get around to them, didn't ya? FEAR NOT!

After trying and failing miserably to modify them, I used an awesome free online CAD program to model up some replacements that a friend was kind enough to 3D printed for me. One is the new home for the bluetooth mic and the other is a rocker that I will eventually use for garage door buttons.



I disassembled the bluetooth mic and removed the pins from the connector so I could thread it through the hole where, presumably, the sunroof button wires would have gone.



Pro Tip: TAKE PICTURES WHEN REMOVING PINS FROM CONNECTORS! I though "It's just three wires, how hard could it be to remember?" Well guess what, I forgot. I tried matching the wire colors up to the wires on the harness and for some unholy reason Subaru decided to make those not match up (the pink and black wires are switched between the harness and the mic). I was able to find a picture online of the correct pinout and once I corrected it the mic worked just fine.

The rubber bit around the mic fits PERFECTLY inside the new blank. I didn't measure it before doing the 3D model, it just worked out that way. The mic amplifier board also fits nicely in a gap at the back. Also a happy accident.







Here's the garage door button rocker. While the mic blank fit perfectly this one will need a little bit of revision so it will actually rock. Also, it didn't print quite like I hoped it would.



And here's the final-ish result (I sanded down and painted the blank... I might clean up and paint the whole console in the future so everything is all matchy-matchy).

[Mazikowski]

Reserved...

[Gunman]

Now THAT is custom, and innovative, nice job!

[Magoo]

Nicely done.

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