Jballard81's 1994 super cab 4.0 4x4 Restore

[rumblecloud]

That looks really nice! I hope mine turns out that good.

 

[Terrys87]

It is rewarding to be driving an older truck that looks a lot newer. I think you are going to enjoy the experience. Sandpaper sounds scary but you will get into trouble quick with a buffer and rubbing compound. It takes a little more effort with sandpaper but I think you get better results. Rubbing comound can burn the paint or sand thru the paint. Looking great.

 

[jballard81]

Well after only procrastinating for about a year with my refurbished dashboard sitting in the garage, my wife accidentally bumped into it while parking and pushed it against the hot water heater:

Luckily I have a bit more bodywork experience and some better tools now. I used an air die grinder and had the cracks cleared out in about 5 minutes:

In my previous repair i used a bunch of plastic bond. I think I'm going to skip that and go directly into filler. Will update once I get a chance to work on it again.

 

[Terrys87]

I have used filler in the past. One of these days, I want to try kitty hair fiberglass filler. I kind of wonder if it would be better?

 

[jballard81]

I have used filler in the past. One of these days, I want to try kitty hair fiberglass filler. I kind of wonder if it would be better?

I'm going to use filler since that's what I have, but I follow a guy on YouTube that swears by fiberglass. He says fiber glass first, followed by filler, then icing as needed will give you a fix that will last a long time.

After looking more closely at my pics, I did notice that the cracks that came in were NOT in any of the spots (well, one was close) that i had previously fixed. This old vinyl is just beat by the sun. I almost wonder if it would be smart to cut in a few more relief lines in the dash and then fill those, maybe make it less susceptible to cracking in the future?

If i really hated myself, i could sand the whole thing down and give the entire dash a coat of filler/icing... That sounds pretty awful though

 

[jballard81]

Body filler and smoothed out with the angle grinder. Minimal hand sanding. Sprayed on 3 coats of charcoal gray on it. It matches the vents much better than the previous gray. Good enough!

Just need to let it cure up and work up the effort to install it.

 

[Terrys87]

That turned out really well. You will be smiling every time you see it driving down the road knowing the difference you made on it and it is looking new.

 

[SenorNoob]

Get it done before you drop it again...