Car Maintenance: Not an ad but it should be.

I'm hard on consoles. The armrest console in each of my last three cars has taken a beating, since I generally keep my right elbow planted on it at all times when driving (side effect of giant arms).

As you can see from the picture at left, my current one was in pitiful shape. Not only was the leather cracked and the padding totally smashed (this happened in both prior cars), but the tray in the middle was cracked (presumably under the weight of my giant elbow and accompanying arm. Over time that crack worked its way towards the back of the armrest and eventually shattered the plastic, causing springs to fly out, leaving my only option to reassemble the pieces with black duct tape.

In walks my Val-Pak (this is not an ad for Val-Pak). I usually flip through these things looking for restaurant coupons for places we might go eat at anyway, and I stumbled across RockAuto.

Gotta say, this should be an ad for RockAuto but it isn't.

RockAuto basically has all kinds of parts for all kinds of cars.

So I ordered (but I ordered the wrong color). So I sent it back and ordered again.

And the piece came, along with installation and removal instructions that were plain and simple.

And so, in just a matter of minutes, I ended up with this console instead of the one above. Night and day difference. Thanks, RockAuto.