rear console cover

The part of my center console that holds the rear cup holders (which I will refer to as the rear console cover from now on) has always had a gap at the top where it meets the center console door hinge (does that make any sense?). I figured this was normal. When climbing around my car this weekend (climbing from the drivers seat to the rear seat to retrieve an umbrella in the hatch) I managed to take the entire rear console cover off. I thought I had snapped it back in, but it came off again the next day (probably just from vibration during driving)--my boyfriend had taken my Prius again and thought someone had broken into the car (what a feat!) but couldn't figure out why they would be interested in getting into that part. When he got home, he told me my car was falling apart. We snapped it in again (this time we actually took the time to look at how the part attaches, and it seems like there are slots at the bottom), it seems like pretty firmly this time.

So... is the gap normal? Has anyone else had problems with this part coming off? I'm due for my first oil change soon, so I could have it looked at then.

 

No... it's not the indent. It's actually a gap between the hinge of the console door and the rear plastic piece. You can kind of see the wires and stuff that are behind the rear cover. I'll take a picture when I get home and post it.

 

No, it's at the top, where you would grasp the cupholder to flip it down. If you're looking down at the center console, it would be right behind where the hinge for the console to open is and right in front of where the vertical piece that contains the cup holder begins. The gap may exist to allow the center console to open.

Pictures this evening, I promise... (if I can remember)...

 

Damn damn damn... I didn't get around to taking a picture last night; I was going to do it this morning, under the assumption that I would be allowed to drive my Prius today because it wasn't my boyfriend's turn to drive the carpool (see thread "my Prius left me for another man!"--I lost weekday possession of the Prius to my boyfriend who has a much longer commute). He left much earlier than me, and either plans changed or he just took the extra fob out of habit/sleepiness and drove the Prius. I'll get my act together tonight and take the pic when the Prius returns.

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If "the cover is closed" means when the top part that allows you access into the center console is closed, then I definitely have a significant gap.

Pictures are definitely necessary for this, trying to describe it is too confusing. I apologize for my lack of foresight. I should have known he would steal the Prius .

 

Thanks for the pictures.

So in the second picture, the gap between darker fabric covering of the console and the lighter plastic is what I am refering to; my gap was bigger than that. It's possible that it's better now that we reattached the piece, but I didn't check that closely the evening that it happened; I will look at it again tonight (and take a picture).

 

Sucess! I took a picture of the gap that I was talking about (I had to crop it to bring down the file size; not on my usual computer and lacking photo editing tools). I guess you can't really see any wiring down there, but the gap does look bigger than in the picture jrfaris posted. Perhaps it's just the perspective though? Even if the gap is bigger, I don't think it's a big deal as long as the rear piece doesn't keep coming off.

Adendum: ARGH! Sigh. I think it's some kind of conspiracy. I have my pic, but I can't add an attachment; I get an error message every time I try to add the attachment and then if I try to resubmit it (or do anything else), it says my post has already been submitted. I've tried both Safari and Firefox, last night and this morning, and nothing has changed. I guess you'll all have to bear with me and wait in suspense just a little bit longer for a pic.

 

Alrighty, cropped the photo even further and got the file size small enough that I could add the attachment. Thanks jrfaris! I knew I should have set the resolution of the camera to be smaller .

 

Clips? What clips? When the piece came off, I don't remember anything that could be construed as a "clip." I wonder if my piece is faulty to begin with. Perhaps I'll pull it off again and take another photo--though I don't want other people to go around pulling apart their car to compare to mine.

 

Oh, never mind. I just went down to fiddle with the piece some more and realized I could push the top in even further. Now it looks more like CarMyne. Just a note--the photo that I posted is how my car has always looked, even before I knocked it off, so it wasn't installed properly to begin with.

 

I'll have it looked at when I go in for my first oil change next month. Though I kind of fear that the dealership might manage to screw it up now that it seems properly installed by trying to yank it out and someone damaging the piece.