How to: add a coin and cup holder

[tchnprgrmr]

Materials:
sandpaper (grinder preferred)
Ford/Mazda/Mercury DIN radio removal tool
tow hitch or similar heavy piece of metal

Steps:
1) Find a 2nd gen Ford Taurus, years 1992-1995
2) Using the Ford DIN removal tool, remove the stock coin and cup holder from the car
3) Remove the empty plastic holder, if its there

4) Using the grinder carefully grind away 1 or 2 mm from the sides of the holder, you can round the corners if you wish
5) Compare the holder to the empty space in your dash, if it doesn't fit repeat step 3 until it does. Its helpful to reverse the holder so that the front faces in, that way it isn't a pain to remove completely every time you need to correct it


6) I used the tow hitch, but I'm sure something else will work, looking into the now completely empty whole you will see a support bar running straight down. Using the tow hitch, place a few good hits to it. You need to do this because the bar is not parallel to the face, and is forward a few mm more than it needs to be. This doesn't seem to affect the stability, and if you don't do this the new holder won't sit flush with the center piece.

Support bar:

Using the tow hitch:

7) Slide the holder into place. You can make this easier if you grind off a little bit from the bottom of the holder. Either way, pop open the cup holder part and place one of the open spots over the shift knob. Once this is completed slide the entire holder into place. It may take a little bit of jiggling, but don't force it. If you need to you can "squeeze" the bottom of the holder to make it slide into place easier.
8) Step back and take a look at it. If it isn't flush with the center piece, remove it and repeats steps 6 and 7.

Also, the coin holder will work no problem, but unless your shifter is shorter than stock, whether through a short shifter, or a shorter shift knob, the cup holder will still come out and work, but you won't be able to shift into 1, 3, or 5 without it hitting the cup holder. Its only about 1/2 inch too tall, so if you are feeling lazy autozone sells a $10 shift knob that you can modify for it to fit.

[KING6]

........................

you used a tow hitch?........... wtf>?

Also this is pretty worthless with out any pics at all since most people who would be willing to do this wouldnt have a clue of what your talkin about with out them

[Car-InsanE]

hahahahahah king

[Nealio]

Thats way too much work. Ragin and I just cut off the panel on the back of the DIN module and it worked just fine.

[BrokenJohnny]

I keep my coins in my pocket, and usually don't drink when I'm driving. It's too hard to steer and shift at the same time while holding a cup.

[KING6]

I toss my coins in the arm rest. Also use it to hold my bottle/can/cup.

I thought it was funny, if those things came stock on our cars, there would problay be hundreds of threads of people asking how to get rid of them.

[xtreme17]

Thanks for the writeup!
I always have my passengers ask me "why doesn't this car have cupholders?"... I respond with "why doesn't a Lamborghini have cupholders?".
It's a good comeback that shuts them up, however... I would like if there was an extra cupholder in that area.
I have tried using my armrest as a cupholder, but i always hit my drinks with my arm when shifting, and I like to actually use the armrest.
I may give this a shot in the spring when my car is finished in the body / paint shop.
I'll be waiting for the pics to be posted on here.

Karma given.

[Renboy]

I did this a few months ago. I used the same coin/cup holder, but used a different procedure.
1) Instead of beating the dash support with...anything...cut the back of the coin holder out so it no longer gets in the way.
2) With the back cut out, the springs in the coin/cup holder will now press directly against the support bar. The problem here is that one of the springs (can't remember which one) falls directly into a hole that's in the support bar. Take a small piece of sheet metal and stick it to the support bar (I used jb weld to hold the piece in place).
3) I also had to move the din clips on the coin/cup forward so that it would sit flush against the dash. To do this, I popped them off, moved them to where they had to be, drilled two small holes (for each one) and rivetted them into place. When I did this, I also added a small piece of metal to the back with two holes drilled into it so the rivets would go through the din clip, then through the plastic holder, and finally through the metal tabs. I wasn't sure, but thought that the plastic wouldn't be strong enough to hold the rivets.

And you need a short shifter to use the cup holder...unless your tranny is fubar and doesn't go into 1st, 3rd, or 5th....

If anyone can host the finished pics I can email them.

[Kansas]

yount greg @ gmail.com

i'll post em up, take out the spaces of course

[tchnprgrmr]

Ok, i just uploaded the pictures. The reason that I moved the support bar back was because I didn't want to ruin the holder. Odd reason I know, but if you want to move it to another vehicle, the back support in the holder is necessary. Using the grinder the entire process takes at maximum 30 minutes. It only takes maybe 3 short hits to move the support bar in the car back.

King6 - the reason that i used the tow hitch, is because the back is flat, thus allowing me to make sure that the support bar was parallel to the opening. Also, I didn't have anything else on hand when I did this.

[whitenoyz]

Yeah, i just use the ash tray as a coin holder and i have a rule, no eating or drinking in my car. That little slot is a good place to put the remote for my head unit

[the phranc]

I still have the cup holder that fits in the arm rest and cradles the hinges. I like the idea but not the particular part you used. Does any one know of other 1xDIN inserts from other cars?

[ragincanadian4]

As Nealio stated, I did this, those cupholders are pretty pointless if you ever mess with your stereo. I'm now back to the the cubby hole, looks cleaner.

[6builder_adn]

someone should put this in the projects section