Re: Driver side rear / interior sail panel
Just fixed mine with a large flat, panel washer I bummed from an engineer in my building, you can get them singly at Lowes. I pulled off the Air Bag badge, mine came off easily and seemingly intact. I used a long (18") socket extension with a 7mm socket to remove the bolt. I dropped my bolt but it got hung up in the panel and was easy to retrieve. Use caution when handling this bolt, mine had black sticky crap on it so I had to be careful not to get that on my tan fabric. I pulled the sail panel out a bit and fed the socket extension through the hole left by the Air Bag badge. I carefully positioned the 7mm bolt with the washer in the appropriate position and screwed it back into place, using caution when it became snug, I didn't want to over tighten and break what I just fixed. I popped the Air Bag badge back into place and my panel looks great. I feel confident that the air bag will still deploy properly, I just hope I never find out. I literally fixed it 15 minutes ago, during lunch at work, so I haven't driven at high speeds with the windows down or anything but it feels pretty snug, we'll see what happens. I called my dealership to see about a warranty replacement but, with my car being 9 years old, I was out of luck. I called a couple of salvage yards but had no luck there either. I've had my 05 CTS for 2 years and just put up with that stupid thing hanging down. Thanks for the inspiration to really look at it and formulate a solution. Hope this helps someone else and gives them the same sense of satisfaction that I now have. I also changed my spark plugs last night, wow what a difference, but that's another thread.
