When I bought my 2005 V50, the overhead console was cracked, loose, and looking pretty rough. I went online looking for a cheap replacement, and the only thing close I could find was one that was for a sunroof car (my V50 happily has no sunroof - in Arizona, you try to keep the sun OUT of your car). Being cheap, I ordered it anyway. The old broken one is on the left, and the "new" sunroof panel is on the right...


They're very subtly different colors, but the new color will actually match my upgraded interior better (a future post on that one).



After a bit of work removing the black center panel from the broken panel, and relocating it to the new panel, from which I'd removed the sunroof button. I also scavenged a few other bits, like lower-wattage light bulbs that apparently melt the plastic housing slower...

When I went to install the rebuilt panel, I could see what happened to the old one. The headliner material overlapped some of the slots that the panel's tabs locate into - apparently the previous owner had tried to overcome this impediment by pounding on the poor panel with his fist until most of the tabs were broken and the panel itself was cracked. 60 seconds with a razor knife fixed this problem nicely, and the "new" panel went in like butter.

 

Isn't it amazing how people will do the most stupid things when working on a car?

 

There's a general lack of understanding the whole "cause and effect thing"... this was a prime example of how just a tiny bit of care would have prevented destroying the old console.

 

I agree.

Reminds me of a story of when I bought a Jeep Cherokee 4x4 for resale at auction. The vehicle was super clean and basically ready to sell. The Jeep had a power window problem on the passenger's door so I opened it up to take a look.

What I found was a brand new set of vice grips holding the window up since the regulator had broken. So, I put those nice vice grips in the tool box and spent a whopping $77 to install a new assembly.

Those vice grips were probably worth 20 bucks on their own. Stll had the tag attached.

 

Love the Cherokees - best SUV ever built (well, when the mission statement includes operation off asphalt). You can get an idea of my opinion from the license plate...


I guess I can kind of understand using a pair of vice grips to temporarily hold up the window (presumably during the exploratory process of figuring out what was wrong with the window). What I can't understand is not just buying the regulator and swapping it out once I went to the trouble of opening up the door.

I'm hoping I won't find too many other examples of the previous owners brain cramps as I work my way through my "new" V50...

 

As a licensed dealer, we see all sorts of hack work. The time to rig the problem is often greater than the time to fix it right.

I remember a Volvo 740 that we bought years ago. This thing had ice cold air. The problem was that you couldn't shut off the compressor. Someone hot wired it to the power supply through ignition.

We fixed the problem by removing the climate module and reflowing the solder on the contacts.