dash help.

[Mojeaux18]

[yellow3800]

Nice pictures! I absolutely love that!

I sent mine out to justdashes.com. Yes, I'm the one who spent $1500 on the restore. I love it and I should for all that money. I didn't know where else to turn. I suggest the above one first. A couple things differ though:

turn around time was a month.

I didn't have much input because these guys do this everyday. check out the videos!

This price isn't bad because my car's interior was like new after I put it back in. People spend $15k on new cars for this reason, so thats how I justified spending the money. It was the last thing to make my car like new, and it did.

[yellow3800]

Instead of starting a new thread,

WHAT OPTIONS DO WE HAVE AT REPAIR?

I just acquired another beretta that needs some help. It is not the worst, and probably closer to the 'best' as far as our dashes go... the heat shrinking, NO WARPING, and some 4" cracks up to 1cm wide. I'm not sending it off.

Since the vinyl is hard now, are there any kinda vinyl repair glues to fix cracks?

I used advance auto's vinyl/leather repair one time to fix a 2" x 1/2" crack in a leather seat and the result was PERFECT. I wonder if anyone has used this kinda stuff on our dashes or are they all really so fubar that we need to remove them completely.

What have you done to fix your dash beyond re-tacking down?

Andy
Lemon <---just dashes and perfect
89gt <---more cracks than the grand canyon
other <--- needs some help

[SuperLbody]

Honestly, my dash is bubbled and I'm just going to order a dashmat carpet cover and call it good.

[themixer]

I managed to get a hard plastic cover for my 1989 should look good when dyed to the oem color

[yellow3800]

I had that hard plastic cover on mine for a while. I never could bring myself to use it because my base vinyl was that bad. in fact, the dash restore shops need that base vinyl to even begin! i actually had to j-yard buy a dash and send that one in as my dash was only the plastic frame. that plastic cover does snug well - grind off the high spots and sandwich it down TIGHT. I recommend this before any fabric cover because this can look stock. I think jcwhitney sold me the one I bought years ago. I sold it with a gtz I let go years back. I wonder where the heck those guys are! I told them about the board!

[Rettax3]

My second '88 Camaro had one of those hard-shell plastic dash-covers when I bought the car -it was $#!%. Warped, cracking, brittle. It wasn't installed well either, which didn't help it much, it had orange RTV trying to hold it in place, but warpage distorted it in places maybe as much as two inches... I've seen them for our cars from time to time, JCWhitney, even ebay has had them, but I could never bring myself to even TRY one of them.

themixer, keep us updated on this, it would be good to know if you found a decent quality version that is still available. Have you installed yours yet? How long have you had it, where did you get it from? Early-gen, or later-gen dash?

Has anyone tried that vinyl material sold at some fabric stores that has a soft foam backing? I might tear my Teal Indy's old grey dash apart (after I swap it out for the black one I have for it), and try some of that stuff if I can find it again -I don't know if it will stretch well enough or not though...

Edit: Went out to a local fabric store this weekend, and I didn't really find what I was thinking about -they may no longer carry it, or this store might not have the variety that some of the others do. Anyway, they DID have something fairly close -a soft, flexible, grained vinyl adhered to a fabric backing with a very THIN layer of foam too. By thin, I mean like +/-1mm. This might work though, especially with a little heat applied. I am also thinking that if someone had a decent, unwarped dash, and the means to make a mold of it, it could be possible to repair these old dashes of ours for a reasonable cost plus the cost of shipping... With the variety of colors I saw of this vinyl (and yes, it was rated as both highly abrasion AND UV resistant), there are some really cool possibilities open here, again, if it will stretch well enough.

[themixer]

The dash cover I got from someone on eBay ! Will be starting a build thread soon, just awaiting for a pallet of parts to arrive