Yesterday, I removed the dash cap to see if I could start on a restoration, I've read the restoration threads and felt it was doable. Now for the kicker whoever put the full dash cap on(not me) used about 100 tubes of latex caulk to hold it in place and/or fill gaps, the result when taken off was that about 50% of the orignal dash vinyl came off with the cap as well as a lot of the original foam padding. Question is do I try to restore or just put a new cap over it? I will have to glue the pieces of factory foam that came off, that I could save in chunks, into place but would still have lots of big gaps. I'll post a pic later today. Thanks for the advice.

Mike

+1 vote for full dash cover

I live in Gresham Ore. I have a dash free for U-Haul.

fly.phred@frontier.com

 Phred

Search for a better dash, that's what I would be doing

Yup, a better dash would be a better starting point, after looking a lot more closely at mine, there is so much material missing that I fear it would next to impossible to actually repair, there are lots and lots of small pieces of the vinyl missing, cracked and broken that I would have to virtually cover the entire thing with the bumper repair stuff and then try to return it back to original form. I'm also not real sure that it wouldn't completely disintegrate when I took it out. Thanks.

Mike

Taking a stab at this right now and I think it might be worse off than when I started! Autobody isn't my thing I guess. Filling the cracks will be the easy part, getting it smooth and in the shape you want so that black paint doesn't show where you've done work is the hard part.

I vote full dash cover. Honestly my 1/2 dash really wasn't bad at all.

I am okay with the half cap on my car though I wish the PO had smoothed the glue out a bit before putting the cap on as I can see every line of glue that was used in the form of a slight visible indentation or protrusion, not sure which.

Edited April 9, 20159 yr by Mikes Z car

^^^^ I did that when I capped my '75 dash back in the 80's.  After a month in the Texas sun, you could see every line of glue.

Must be different makers of caps, mine is thick enough you could use concrete to glue it on and there wouldn't be a line or bump.

I believe you can do it just take your time and treat it like body work, daunting yes, but give it a shot. I think I may have some photos of mine before and after on this website if not shot me and email an I'll show you my dash how it came out.

The thing with resurfacing the dash yourself is going to be the tradeoff of factory texture and color. I jumped into my project last week without too much thought and it still turned out fairly well.

My best advice is (since you'll be doing a lot of sanding), mix your body filler components and fiberglass resin components together in a ratio to get a pancake batter consistency. It'll partially self level and sand down faster than bondo itself, while taking longer to set up.

I'll post a photo off my phone that shows a little bit how the texture turned out. I used an SEM texture spray can and semi gloss black trim paint. I'd recommend two cans of texture and a full can of spray paint. Then consider doing the same to your centre console or at the least, your glovebox door.

I decided to put on a full dash cap and I'm going to source another dash in better shape than mine, restore that dash and then replace mine with the cap. Thanks for all the replies.

Mike

I have an almost perfect 76 dash, but the problem is that every time I try to ship it, I'm hit with huge shipping costs. If anyone in the Toronto area can recommend who to send it to, I'd love to finally be able to sell it. I know this isn't the place to offer, but I've tried selling it 3 times and haven't been able to affordably ship the unit. It's in excellent condition with what appears to be a scratch (which can most likely be buffed out).

 

It's a shame to have it wrapped in a very well packaged cardboard column in my basement under a table because I can't get a decent shipping quote. Or maybe it's cause Canadian shipping quotes are always close to double. I dunno.