You'll have to excuse the mess in the rest of the car (dust from bodywork, insulation on floor from a squirrel nest in the blower motor, etc), but the new black dash is in place:
the dash and console look great. question though....why do you still have red carpet in there?
x2
Very good question.Lose the carpet.I bought new carpet from Ebay.Beautiful.It REALLY makes the interior look great.Get some and install it.Already molded.Just needs a little tpuppies and a few holes cut for your whatevers.
Looks good, what was wrong with the red dash
By the way,the dash looks great,as does the console.But that carpet...................................................
The red carpet is in there because I was too lazy to pull it out and didn't have a black carpet to install in its place at the moment. For much the same reason there are blue TC seats in there as well (although I will be dying the seat covers black until I can get a set of new black covers for the fronts). I am aware of the eBay guy that sells carpets and will be buying one in black eventually.
Oh, and the head liner's still red, too (for now) :hick:
As for why I pulled the red dash, the fact that I've got blue TC seats aside, here's the main reason why:
u did all that for 2 not-so-big cracks? if i had blue seats with a red carpet/headliner, i'd have bigger things on my mind then the dash.
and i gotta ask, how did the gas cap wind up inside the car?
O.K.,I'll accept that answer.LOL.
Whoa. you da man. I don't know if I would have had the patience for that little project.
Dash looks awesome
It's not just a matter of two not-so-big cracks - the entire dash top had become brittle as hell. The pics don't show it, but every time any amount of pressure was put on the dash it would leave a "star" fracture. So much as a slight bump and the surface would break. There are literally hundreds of cracks - the ones you see just happen to be the biggest because they're the oldest and have spread apart with age. I'll try to get a pic that shows the true condition.
I also removed the dash because I wanted to rewire the car. The remote start/keyless/alarm, fog lights, buttstuffogue cluster swap, stereo, tripminder, power lumbar seats, overhead console, and other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting had created a veritable rat's nest of wiring that I wanted to clean up, and I also wanted to rearrange the factory ignition switch wiring so that the switch itself doesn't carry all of the current. Having the dash out allowed me to do so with ease.
As for the gas cap: The entire body of the car is stripped, awaiting paint. Fuel door, gas cap, door handles, side trim, window trim, all side glass, emblems, lights - all have been removed. The gas cap just happened to have landed in the console tray - most of the other stuff is in the trunk or back seat :hick:
I thought you were just making a new fill point for the tank! The dash looks awesome! I know all to much about those little spider web type cracks. That would explain the entire dash pad in my 84.
Are you going to paint/dye the Charcoal trim around the dash/radio bezels black too? I think that would complete the "look". And I must say, it looks great!
it looks great now, but how long until that one cracks as well?
i'd put one of those dash covers on it while it still looks good. not one of those carpet ones, but the fitted plastic or wth ever it is.
Be careful of the fitted plastic ones. I have a couple of Eldorados here with the thin plastic covers and they look worse than the crack original one. They are so thin that they wrap all over the place.
Don't know who makes them or if some are better than others.
TED
http://www.dashcaps.com
http://www.dashtops.com
I have used both...the Dash Tops one is thinner (no tpuppies required) but the grain is very nice. Fit perfectly. Only complaint: the cover is a little short the driver's side of the dash, on the edge, so it doesn't go all the way down to the seam.
Dash Caps is a lot thicker, requires tpuppies around speakers, center dash cover, etc. Grain is almost like original. Fits nice...requires taping to keep down upon initial install. But the driver's side does go all the way to the seam.
Of the two, for the OEM look, can't beat Dash Caps. But if you just want to cover the cracks I don't see why the Dash Tops one would not be a good solution. I love mine...it's in the convertible, what does that tell ya. ;)
Sorry about the hijack, Carm. New dash looks great!
In JC Whitney, I saw kits to fix cracked dashes. You melt plastic and fill the cracks. Is that too hard or something, cause I've never seen anyone talk about it here.
that looks good, man.
OK, so here's a better pic of the old dash, better showing the cracks. The discolouration is from sitting outside and being rained on (hard to believe that a single rain storm and a week outside could discolour it like that), but the cracks show just how bad this dash was (and how brittle - I put a million more cracks in it after taking the pic, just by pressing on it with my thumb).
I'd considered a dash cap but had a good crack-free dash and wanted to do some rewiring anyway. If this one cracks I'll most definitely go with a cap...