I finished cleaning up my phone mirror kit today. I don't like wires. I don't even like having them tucked away in the little cubby on the back of the center console or inside the console itself.
I decided to take the back panel of the center console off. There were not a lot of resources I could find online, but I figured it out.
It's held on simply by these 4 screws and a bunch of clips. Take the rubber molding out of the cubby. Use a hex key to remove these four screws.
The best way get started on popping the clips out and removing the panel is to start from the top here. Use a flat head screwdriver to pry the panels apart (see the diagonal line between the two hinges for the console lid? right there.), and then when you get a little gap you can use the heel of your hand and hit it up and away with a little thrust. It will start to pop out and you can pretty much just lift it out after that. Be careful, of course. There are wires and plugs attaching it to the console.
So once I got it out and onto the ground, the gears started churning on how I could clean things up. I'm not a big a/v guy or mobile electronic guy but I figured out a neat little low tech solution to clean it up.
When I was trying to figure out how to get the back panel off, I happened to pick up the rubber mat on the floor of the console. I decided I could make a false floor for the console and hide everything in there.
To get started I drilled a hole here in the floor of the console. Feed your RCA cable through here.
The cables will come through like this.
Next I drilled a hole through the top of the "cubby" on the rear console panel. What you're looking at here is you are looking down on the top of the rear panel. You can see how the cubby bubbles out. I removed a couple of the plugs for easier drill access.
Feed your cables through and put the panel back on.
For my 'false floor' I bought this weird plastic board stuff at Lowes. In theory, anything that is flat, semi sturdy and 9.5 x 12 would work (drywall, plywood, etc). The mat hides the material quite well. I found this stuff over by where the plexiglass is at Lowes.
This stuff was thin enough that I cut it with a razor blade. You might prefer something sturdier but this will do the job.
I bought these rubber grommet thingies to hold up my false floor. They are 1 " tall and I think 1 13/16" at the base. They are in one of the drawers at Lowes by where all the screws, bolts, etc are. I also bought some 3m double sided clear adhesive tape in the tape aisle (go figure)
Here's the floor of the console with the grommets in, the adapter set up, etc. (also used the tape on the bottom of the adapter so it won't slide around. Used some twist ties and heat shrink tube to clean up the wires a bit.
The wires at the top are both USBs. One to power the adapter, one to power the HDMI to Samsung cable. The red wire at the bottom is out to my phone. There is actually a nice little built in notch at the front of the console beneath the lid where you can run this cable out.
Mat back in and some final pics.