The door locking switch in my centre console as fallen through - what's the easiest way of getting it back in place ?

Would it be viable to get the cigarette lighter socket out and push it back in place, or are there better ways ?

Thanks

It maybe easier to pop up the gear lever gaiter & get your hand in & pop the switch back in.

How easy is it to pop the gaiter - on my last car, a Renault Migraine, I tried that, there was a snapping sound, bits of plastic flew across the place and the gaiter was loose for evermore

I want to avoid that as the car's up for sale and I don't want to do anythnig that makes it look bad

It's very straight forward to unseat the gear gaitor, iirc you just need to open the ash tray and prise the plastic gaitor surround up from the front, then work your way round the sides. If you have to remove the centre console it's a lot more work.

For either plan, you can find pics to assist you in the jumbo box retrofit thread in my sig.

Well I can't fault your description of how to do it - I'll give it a try :-)

Well taking the gaiter off gives far better access, but no matter how hard I try I can't get the switch to click into place - does anybody know if there is a technique to this, or is it just brute force and ignorance ?

Brute force works everytime, but if you had to press it so hard that you pushed it through then you probably need a new switch.

It should just clip back in so I'd guess that either the bit on the button or on the underside of the centre console itself has snapped off, which probably explains why it fell through in the first place.

There happens to be another octavia in the car park, and peering through the wind, the switch does stand proud of the console, so I do think it is a case of having to try harder, but I'm wary of causing more damage. If I can't get it in place at the weekend, I might resort to superglue

This happened to me with my elbow, and the best way i found was to remove the Cigg. Lighter plug and use the fingers to pop the switch back from the innerside. it was easy.

Right I had the same problem. I tried with all my strength to push it back in from underneath, no joy. I was nearly lifting the whole centre console!. So I found someone else who in theory would have the strength to do it, same again no chance!

So I was looking at stripping the console out to do it, when the Mrs gets in the car and says "what's that hole?" I reply : don't worry I'm gonna fix it its impossible to do from underneath, with that she pushed the switch up and clicked it into place in all of 1 second!

Its the position not the force you use, well that's what I told the Mrs.