[sstilley]

Hi everyone
I just purchased my first Mariah. It is a 1999 252 Shabah. I like it so far except for the cheap latches and cover openings. What are the preferred upgrades for the latches and upgrades for the "wood" covers on the little cubbies.
Shawn

[ShabahZ280]

Welcome to the MOC sstilley and congrats on your "new" 252! Latches can easily be replaced with new parts made by Southco (the original manufacturer).

As far as the woodgrain storage compartment covers, those were made from molded ABS plastic in-house at the Mariah factory, and replacing them with new ones is going to be next to impossible. Repairing them is about your only option if you want to keep the OEM look and styling. There are plastic repair shops that can fix them, and then you can have a new woodgrain finish hydrographically put on there by a hydrographics shop, but this option can get rather pricy. (I did this with my dash gauge cluster, which you can read about in the projects section)

The other option is to repair them yourself, if you've just got cracks (not broken pieces), by using some sort of filler, sanding down, then you can do a "wrap" using a woodgrain finish vinyl and a heat gun. A few of our members have gone this route to redo their interiors and have had good results.