Rebuilding my dash pad.

[Blue Ox]

Damn, that's impressive!

You've inspired me to try to tackle the dash on my Corvette. I may have questions tho.

 

[tycharles]

That looks awesome! Congrats.

Thanks man, I guess for full disclosure, I do custom interiors for a living but have still learned a ton from forums like these

 

[Chris64]

OK, well I got back to the dash project...

I'll share what I learned so far to serve as a warning to others.

So I just used contact cement to attach a bunch of foam pieces. I'm not sure what I could've done better here. It's hard to manage large pieces but in the end seams will show through on the vinyl.

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Then I glued more pieces

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All the foam attached...ready for sanding.

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[Chris64]

Then I started sanding it smooth. The optimal tool for this was a portable belt sander followed up with a block sander.

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That went pretty smooth. Here's a test fit. At this point I'm not sure if what I plan to do will work.

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All ready for vinyl!

 

[Chris64]

OK, here's where things stopped going according to plan.

Any time I've worked with vinyl cloth in the past, it was on door panels, amp racks or speaker boxes. Basically, things I could staple. My experience with contact cement has not been good. Maybe now will be different.

So I started with the valley that I knew would be problematic. And it was. The cloth barely held and certainly wouldn't hold the extreme stretching I'd need to do.

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So It was time to face reality. I was going to need to have a seam. I watched a couple videos and my daughter has a sewing machine. I ordered some UV resistant #69 thread as recommended online and made my first stitch. I'm not sure what you call this. A French seam is when you run a stitch down both sides of the seam. The video I saw was all in Spanish so I'm calling this style a Mexican seam.

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Next - adventures in gluing!!

 

[Chris64]

OK, so gluing went sort of as planned.

Here's what I learned:
* It showed every little imperfection underneath. Most people put a thin padding layer here and I'm guessing that's why.
* All the hot-rod shows have the upholstery guys cut a small channel in the foam for the stitch to fit. Now I see why.
* If all the glue feels cured, and you take your nice new dash out to the car and let it sit in the sun, all the glue will come undone. **

I did it in stages. First the front part.

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I bungee'd a cloth on the "valley" over night to ensure it wouldn't pull off.

The next day I did the back half. I should've made better plans for the left side of the dash bezel. It was very hard to get this to wrap around all the compound curves. I probably would've preferred to put in another seam.

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I think it looks OK. The screw holes underneath look a little weird in the pic. I c-clamped washers to hold the shape for the stock screws. The defroster vents were not as forgiving as I'd hoped. I would've angles them a little more in retrospect. Over all, it still looks better than anything else on my truck so far and it was a good learning experience. I'll probably try to do something similar for the doors because it's a lot cheaper than buying stuff.

Thanks for attending my Ted Talk.

** I panic repaired everything I think. The contact cement I used was Barge and I thinned it a little but so it would go on easier. It's supposed to be fine for this type of application. I'm hoping if I give it a few days to cure this won't be a problem again.

 

[Chris64]

I filled all the speaker holes (and cracks) with fiberglass/bondo and wrapped in leather. btw I like the seam to just be around the gauge bezel not all the way across like some do. just my 2 cents

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If I had skill to do this, this makes way more sense. Especially that bezel seam, but that has to be perfect. I may end up getting a chance to try sadly.