Rebuilding my dash pad.

OK, A new project that probably won't work, but I'll try. I figure worse case scenario, I just buy a whole new dash.

My original plan was to fill in the cracks and to fiberglass it as others have done. It looks good but I wasn't in love with it versus the more natural looking grain as well as being soft. Regardless, the factory dash foam was peeling away from the metal in areas where the windshield was likely leaking and rust was forming underneath. These areas are beyond salvaging without some major surgery.

I used to do a lot of custom interior parts in the 90's like wrapping custom speaker pods in vinyl so I don't know why that won't work here.

I did a test on a small technical area around a mounting screw and it looked great so let's see how it goes on the whole dash.

A few questions for all the square-body brains here:
1) Is there a chance the foam has asbestos in it? My son asked me that and NGL I can't get it out of my head.
2) does that middle speaker need to be there for any ventilation reasons? I was thinking about maybe putting a couple tweeters right and left to bounce off the windshield but didn't really need a center speaker. I can perforate the vinyl to look stock which would look really cool, but it's also a lot of extra work and years of sun will wear on it.

I plan to wear a respirator even if it's foam but if it's asbestos, I'd probably just ditch it.

It's just foam. The center opening was only for the speaker, so it won't hurt anything at all if you choose to cover that area.

I took mine to an upholstery shop because it had been covered before. Here's copy of a thread of my build, showing the speaker hole covered! https://www.gmsquarebody.com/threads/73-k10-swb-frame-off-redo.23393/post-907505

Have seen some nice dash pad rebuilds. If you’ve done upholstery work should be not too difficult for you.
Common theme is the nicest looking ones were topped with a stretch fabric.

This is a long video but this guy is a true pro and makes an art look easy. I thought if I could get mine to look 40% as good as his I would be happy. Couldn't get close so I bought an aftermarket replacement.

Grit dog said:

Have seen some nice dash pad rebuilds. If you’ve done upholstery work should be not too difficult for you.
Common theme is the nicest looking ones were topped with a stretch fabric.

Click to expand...

This is more complicated than anything I've done but I figure what's the risk. Vinyl stretches pretty good with a heat gun. Hopefully the glue holds it ok.

Productive day.

Stripping off the original dash is not fun. Heat is your friend.


Managed to get it down to mostly shiny metal...except for the rusty bits. I was checking to see if it still fit OK with me prying at it for hours. It's strange to see how wrinkly the original stamped part is. Clearly not the same effort they put into body panels.


Finally coated it with some rust reformer. The ends were really rusty and I went about as far as I could with a wire wheel and steel wool. I'm not sure how well this stuff really works but I know I'll be keeping it dry going forward so I think it should be OK.


I plan to coat it with some EVA foam tomorrow and hopefully sculpt it mostly back to a stock-ish shape and then fighting vinyl cloth.

If that doesn't work, maybe I'll make a metal dash because it looked pretty cool

Was thinking of redoing mine myself, but decided to go with this one. Took a couple of hours and putting it in and out half a dozen times had to trim the edges along the windshield and on the sides to get it to fit right. But I’m very happy with it so far.

I may go that route. We'll see. Contact cement is slowing down my progress greatly.

Here's the first layer of EVA foam to level out everything. It's dense 3mm foam that I had floating around which was the perfect height. On top of that will be foam made from Harbor Freight floor tiles. They shape easily but smell like a mix of diesel, chemicals & China. So I'm letting them air out for a couple days. Also I learned that the Home Depot non-flammable contact cement is trash so I'm waiting for the good old-fashioned flammable stuff.