Just a bit of personal research on 82-92 Camaro armrests, and some info that it seems none of the people who sell parts know, or at least chose not to share. Most sellers will say that while there may be physical differences between door pulls/armrests over the years, but they will all interchange. This is not true, at least not without changing the door panel trim bezels as well.

82-87 used this style armrest, with the groove down the front:



These attach to the trim panel with an exposed allen head screw, and a plastic "spacer" between the rubber armrest and the door handle trim panel.

Below is an 88/89 armrest. These were different from earlier years in that they no longer had the groove on the face, and featured a "covered screw" at the top. The hole in the door handle trim panel this style armrest attaches to is larger than previous ones, and these armrests screw directly thrrough the trim panel with no spacer, and the end of the armrest is made to "insert" into the hole in the trim panel and is secured with a screw that is countersunk into the armrest and hidden with a small round plastic screw cap in the same color as the armrest. These were the armrests know for separating and "butterflying" due to poor adhesion of the glue that attaches the vinyl to the backing. This often happened in short time, and by 1990 the design was revised, which I'll talk about in a bit.


the screw caps are not shown here, but you can see how the upper screw is recessed, allowing for the cap to cover it when installed.
This is also a 88/89 armrest shown as installed, where you can clearly see the screw cap in place.




here you can see how the ends are made on the 88/89 armrests, which inserted "through" the now larger hole in the door handle trim bezel. These armrests will not work with the trim bezels from earlier (or later) years, because the hole is too small to allow the end of the armrest to go through it.

Below is a 90-92 armrest. As you can see it looks very similar to the 88/89 version, but does not have a covered top screw, and while it still attaches directly to the door handle trim panel without any spacer, the end is much smaller than the 88/89 version, so the hole in the trim bezel also went back to being smaller. At this time I'm unsure if its the same bezel used from 82-87, but its definitely not the same as the one used in 88/89. if you attempt to swap a 90-92 armrest onto an 88 or 89, the end of the armrest is too small and will have a big gap around the hole in the door handle bezel where it attaches.


Notice the end that attaches to the door handle trim panel is smaller than the 88/89 version, and so is the hole in the trim panel itself.

close-up detail of a 90-92 armrest, top screw is recessed, but has no provision for the plastic "screw cap/cover) that's found on 88/89 armrests. The whole top end is visibly smaller than the 88/89 version if you compare the 2 versions.

Below is a photo of the trim bezels with that smaller hole for the door handle.

And here is one with a much larger hole. Its frustrating because all these parts guys list every part as 82-92, then tell you it's all interchangeable, and it all definitely is not. Most sellers (even experienced ones) have no idea what model year the car was that the parts they are selling you actually came from, they just tell you they're for 82-92.


I'm intentionally not stating part numbers, as for one i don't know all of them, and secondly i feel that physically SEEING the differences in the parts themselves allows you to see exactly why all these parts from 10 years of production don't all just mix and match the way most of the well known vendors claim they will. I am also not sure how many different trim bezels were made for Camaro between 1892 and 1992, but there were certainly at least 2, and they don't interchange with just any 82-92 armrest. The 2 parts need to correlate with each other as you can see.

 

Neat thread.

I really like all the posts and discussions you have started recently. 20 years ago, I knew all of this stuff. But as years have gone by, I've spent much of my time with other project cars and have recently realized how much I have forgotten in the last 20 years.

 

I have an 84 Trans Am, but I used to have an '89 IROC decades ago. I remember the IROC armrest being different. The lower plastic seemed to separate from the armrest frame on the '89 whereas the '84 doesn't have that problem. It was annoying, and I remember using a glue gun to re-attach it.

 

I put the 82-87 version in my '89 (had the classic glue separation) and they were just slightly upset about that top hole but did end up interchanging fine.



I prefer the more squared-off look for the early Camaro interior style.

 

it is crazy how that happens
so much knowledge just gone

 

yes it seems the plastic bezel/spacer that’s used with the 82-87 style armrests is big enough to cover the extra large hole in the 88/89 door handle bezel. The 90-92 armrests look more like the 88/89 ones, but won’t directly interchange without changing the door handle bezels from the 90-92 along with the armrests.