Budget Dash Pad Restoration

[Reinere]

Decided to "restore" (More modify) my cracked and frankly ugly dashpad. I really cant afford $800 for a restoration company to take it on so I decided I would experiment with doing it myself. 

What I'm using so far. 

Great Stuff Window & Door : This stuff doesn't expand as much as most foam fillers which provides a denser foam. Not sure about the longevity of it but I'm wrapping with marine vinyl so I doubt it will matter much.
 

 

Wallpaper scraper: I used this to remove the curled original Vinyl and dig out the bad foam. 


Marine Vinyl: I went with Blue for a centerline and black to cover the dash with. I'm going for a similar look that what Project time garage did in their how to. This is a thicker material and shouldn't need any foam underneath, but we'll see.



I didn't get any pics of the dash before, but the dash is scraped and foam is applied, I'm waiting for it to cure so I can begin trimming and leveling the dash out. I'll update as this goes. 



Feel free to add input and call my a F***ing idiot. I have no idea what I'm doing 🙃

[Reinere]

Trimmed back the excess foam, going to need another application on the drivers side, might have to dig out all the old foam there, too rotten

[Reinere]

Round 2

[wayno]

I have a question, when you look on the underside of the dash top are there giant triangular holes in the metal or is it solid metal?

 

If it is solid metal, you could just strip everything off and paint it, it does not really look that bad stripped and painted, as long as there are no giant triangular holes, they do have a bead rolled spot on both sides but again it does not really look that bad, take a photo of the underside if you do not understand what I am talking about and post it here.

[Reinere]

3 hours ago, wayno said:

I have a question, when you look on the underside of the dash top are there giant triangular holes in the metal or is it solid metal?

 

If it is solid metal, you could just strip everything off and paint it, it does not really look that bad stripped and painted, as long as there are no giant triangular holes, they do have a bead rolled spot on both sides but again it does not really look that bad, take a photo of the underside if you do not understand what I am talking about and post it here.

Its a solid metal dash, I wanted to give this a try before going that route. So far I need to stop by the fabric store tomorrow and pick up some thin padding for the vinyl. Painting is definitely not off the table tho!

[Slow Loris]

I found doing a double layer of marine vinyl smoothed any remaining divots nicely and gave a good amount of pad, if only because I didn’t want to buy any padding and had the extra vinyl laying around.

[wayno]

17 hours ago, Reinere said:

Its a solid metal dash, I wanted to give this a try before going that route. So far I need to stop by the fabric store tomorrow and pick up some thin padding for the vinyl. Painting is definitely not off the table tho!

 

OK, just wanted to put that out there, when I first bought my 521 work truck it had a tuck and roll dash cover, that hid a multitude of sins.

[Reinere]

Finished trimming the excess foam, leveled out with a brush and a buck knife to cut off the big spots. Came out even enough. Got some foam cored fabric to lay out over the dash.



Applied Gorilla glue contact adhesive to the dash and the material. Smoothed everything out. So far it looks ok. Not sure how the vinyl will lay out over this and its still a little lumpy. I'm hoping that it will even out once I get everything stretched in place.

[NC85ST]

Whatever you do, I’m sure it’s going to look better than what you started with.

[Reinere]

Cut and layed out the vinyl.

 

 

Stitched together blue and black just to hold it in position, I'm hoping the adhesive will hold it in place and make the stitching redundant.

Applied a generous amount of glue to the stich and folded, then clamped between 2 boards to cure. I used some old trim but anything sturdy will work.

 

After applying the adhesive and covering the dash, it looked like shit, very lumpy.

I stretched the material over the dash and glued in place, this is what I'm left with...





I'm not very happy with the result (It's better than what I had before) maybe more time sanding and leveling would have made for a better finished product.

Either way I'll run this for a bit, then probably tear it all off and take another go at it.

 

[mainer311]

I think if you use a material that is too thick/too compliant under the vinyl, the stretching compresses the material too much. 

[Reinere]

27 minutes ago, mainer311 said:

I think if you use a material that is too thick/too compliant under the vinyl, the stretching compresses the material too much. 

I think you're right, possibly a more sturdy material under the vinyl would provide a less unfortunate look. 

 

Here's a test fit.