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[shnevpayne]

As many of you may have been reading, I'm currently rebuilding "THE FOERS" and yes, may the Foers be with you too....
Anyway, to the point at hand, The dash board. The old one, as lovely as it is/was, is made of Checkerplate metal, holding the speedo, temp/oil gauges, switch panel, and well, that's about it... here's a piccy....

 

As you see, gorgeous..... but... it doesn't fit properly, the centre clock is not exactly in as it should be, and I need to add a few extra components in to it....

So, I could make the best of a bad job and use it, or star from scratch using a new plate, or Wood...... With wood, I would paint it, rather than cover it with vinyl  etc, bearing in mind this is what I need to do......

 

So, because I don't have a key, here it is, sorry for the crude drawing!.....

From the left
Map clip,

Big pocket for stuff

(two triangles are air vents for screen)
Clocks (temp, oil and speedo)
Clip for my tipper in the hex shape
The middle rectangle at the bottom, head unit.

Steering wheel.....(the circle... oh come on I thought that one was obvious!)

And the right side,
my switch panel 12 switches
Bottom right, CB RADIO.
 

Bear in mind, this dash is a bucket load bigger than a normal one, so there is space for all of this! Measurements, 132cm across 31cm high. Big piece of dash!

Let me know your thoughts!

 

[ibrooks]

I've done this in the past and there are several methods. I think in your case I'd be making a lash-up in hardboard/5mm MDF. You can cut it with tin-snips like scissors and glue it together with hot-melt glue and bend it to get what you want. Don't worry that it's not terribly strong at this stage - so long as it'll hold it's shape when removed from the car it's good enough even if it needs to be handled with care. Make pods/bulges where you want by sticking anything the right shape and size (yoghurt pots, ice cream tubs, aerosol can lids - the sky is the limit) where you want initially with blu-tack so you can tweak the position but finally with the hot-melt.

 

Cut lumps of cardboard the same size as your gauges/switches etc. and stick them on with blu-tack so you can re-position them until you are happy with the layout and that you can see/reach all the driving related stuff whilst sat in the drivers seat with your belt on - it's a pain not being able to reach the heater controls to demist the windows when strapped into the seat and doing 70 (guess how I know).

 

Are you going to bolt through it to hold it in and therefore the bolt heads will be visible at the end? Easy enough but not exactly elegant (but can look "right" in an industrial type of interior). Or do you want the fixings to be invisible? If you want them invisible then either fasten a bracket to it which in turn bolts to the car or put a bolt through the dash with a permanent nut on the rear (nyloc probably best) - this gives you a stud that can go trough a tab or similar that's fastened to the body behind the dash. In this last case use a low-profile head like a domed socket cap or cheese head set-screw.

 

So you've got something the right shape and size but it looks as rough as a badgers wotsit and has some bolt heads sticking through and margarine tubs for switch panels. Take the worst of the lumps and bumps out of it with rough sand paper (80 ish grit). Maybe even add some body filler to hollows and/or to smoth out corners. Now get a lump of fleece fabric (yes I have used the remains of an old jacket on smaller stuff). Slosh some resin on the dash and then lay the fabric over the dashboard and paint a second coat of resin on it - enough to soak in and saturate the fleece. Let it cure. The fleece won't give you as strong a structure as several layers of proper fibreglass matting but it's plenty good enough for a dashboard and it'll hold several lumps of stuff together that are fairly loosely fastened with glue. Another coat of resin on the rear will help keep the wooden components together and sealed so they won't swell if water gets on it in the future. The fleece is thick enough to loose a small bolt head under so those fixings will largely disappear - just don't go mad stippling the resin in and flatten it completely.

 

Now sand it smooth and drill holes to take the things you want to put in it before finally finishing it with your desired covering be that leather, vinyl, paint or whatever. Stonechip applied with a proper compressor and schutz gun can give a fairly decent texture that looks like the grain of leather at a glance and it'll take a coat of paint/lacquer afterwards.

 

The advantage of this method is that the initial shape can be made of almost anything that gives you the shape and contours you want - so long as it'll hold that shape long enough to put the fleece on and let the resin cure. From then on although you don't remove the wood/cornflake packets/whatever it's just along for the ride.

 

Practice by making some speaker pods or a handbrake cover or similar.

 

Iain