Opinions on Dash Caps

[Fun_in_my_z]

Yeah they are easy to put on. But use the glue spairingly

[TomoHawk]

I just put a full dash cap on my 280Z from Too Intense. It was more affordable than the MSA one, and IMO, looks better. I just painted it and the exposed parts on the old dash the same color, put it on, and held the top on with the defroster panel. It's on there loose, but doesn't rattle or fall off.

[ddezso]

Painted it? Should you be painting vinyl like that?

[EScanlon]

SEM makes a line of "paints" specifically for vinyl.

If you talk to your paint store, you can even get regular auto paint colors "plasticized" or get the "plasticizer" for the paint of your choice, depending on what you are doing.

Remember the mid 70's Corvettes? Their front nose piece was rubber and required that plasticized paint.

2¢

Enrique

[2003z]

Painted it? Should you be painting vinyl like that?

why not? with vinyl paint there shouldn't be any problem.

[TomoHawk]

Dash caps are made of plastic, dude.

[kenz240z]

I bought a dash cap from MSA. It came with a tube of silicon. IIRC, the instructions suggested applying the silicon sparingly around the perimeter of the cap.

[BrianL1987]

Here is a full cap-looks good to me!

I put one on my 73 but, makes opening the glove box difficult & didnt fit around the circular chrome side-vents. Has anyone had these problems? I am thinking of switching to a dash-cap.

[BrianL1987]

I put "full dash-cap" on my 73 but, makes opening the glove box difficult & didnt fit around the circular chrome side-vents. Has anyone had these problems? I am thinking of switching to a dash-cap.

[zark]

This is my first post and this is my third attempt, I keep losing it somehow before I am done.

I have an alternative to the commercially available ABS dash caps. I made my own partial cap using KYDEX a thermoplastic sheeting readily available. It is far better than ABS and the texture is a very good match to the original vinyl. I covered three big gapping cracks in the dash above the center instrument cluster.

First I removed the curled up material along the cracks then filled with plastic body filler and sanded back to the original shape. Rough cut a piece of Kydex leaving material to be trimmed off after froming is done. It is best to have two people one handling the heat gun and one with a damped cloth pad to push and form the heated sheet. The damp cloth helps speed the cooling. Work small areas at a time and as soon as you have one area done tape it down to the edge of dash in that area so it cannot move as you work on other areas. You can go back and reform as often as you like. When we were done forming we trimmed it to shape and then glued it down with a good quality contact cement using masking tape. We did it with the dash out but I am sure it can be done with the dash in. If you want you could use a contrasting color like red. One advantage of black is that it available in a thinner sheet. The color selection in the thinner sheets is limited.

[zark]

I should add that after the small cap was glued down I sprayed the entire dash with SEM Color Coat #15243 satin black. It is great stuff very easy to use it sticks to plastic and vinyl.

[psdenno]

Nice clean fix. How has it held up and for how long?

Dennis