The All About My 1980 Pontiac LeMans Station Wagon Thread...

[motorhead]

Rather than spend $400+ dollars on another used dash, and since there are no aftermarket dash caps available, I dove head first into a shallow pond and decided to repair ours.  If you are familiar with these dashes you'll notice how much expanding foam has been removed from the backside of the dash, and the whole dash has been trimmed back to make room for any repairs and for general clean up (again very dirty/dusty back there). 

The gashes and warps were ground down, picked and beveled out, small holes drilled out around the perimeter of the gash to make for fingers to allow the fibreglass/filler (50/50 mix of short strand and plastic body filler) to hold it together, and finally a coat of straight filler.  There is also a small piece of MDF added to strengthen a very well shrunken/swollen section of the middle dash.

The speaker holes are filled to be drilled out with a hole saw to fit the new taller coaxial Polk 3.5" speakers; there are some screens on order from China to hide them.  This will be done after the top of the dash is done being capped with fibreglass sheet (currently curing) to prevent future splitting.

And then more filler... I hate doing body work.

It will be finished with Duplicolor Truckbed coating and some Duplicolor black vinyl paint.

[motorhead]

Yeah... so... about all that work you did yesterday?  You need to start over.

So I peeled it all off, which is alarming how easy it was to do; but, in retrospect it was a blessing.

Then I drilled a billion 1/16" holes to promote mechanical adhesion so that the cap shouldn't lift, shift, and/or warp.  Also, failure of the first attempt can also be attributed to trying to do it with a single sheet of fibreglass sheet, this time it was put together with about a dozen pieces; and I reduced the amount of activator/hardener I used in the epoxy to increase my working time from 15 minutes to about 30 minutes (a big stress reducer).

Let's hope it works out tomorrow upon review.

[motorhead]

A couple of thin coats of body filler, a lot of sanding, a little hole saw action, and some filler primer.  More sanding and primer tomorrow... oh joy.

[daveismissing]

Did you wrap around the perimeter lip w the glass?

[motorhead]

Did you wrap around the perimeter lip w the glass?

Nope.  I tried that with the first go around and it looked awful.  So I took it right to the edge at the top and trimmed/blended it on the first radius.  The truck bed coating should help protect that leading edge from minor impacts and offer some good UV protection under the trim paint.

[motorhead]

Wet sanded it all last night with 220 grit before heading to bed... had a bitch of a time falling asleep due to the anticipation of spraying it (in my younger years I would work for days straight without sleep to complete a project (think Friday afternoon to Sunday night because I had to drive a car to work on Monday morning)).

I pre-heated the coating in hot water for about half an hour to get the flow rate up (same theory as Plastidip) due to the high solids in the can. The stuff sprayed well but would start to sputter around the 1/4 to 1/2 can mark, which created a few small globs of coating - I poked at them with a dental pick to try and break them up. Hopefully they settle down some more as the solvents flash off. Also, the can say explicitly not to use on a humid day, but doesn't offer a range on the RH%; it is raining here and has been all week humidity is showing 75% outside. The garage is also around 21-22*C and feels very dry inside. We'll just have to wait and see...

[motorhead]

And the dash is back in... finally.  Now to build a shifter mount.

[daveismissing]

Wow - came out nice

[motorhead]

Wow - came out nice

Thanks, I am content with the results.  If anything goes wonky with it I have a spare dash waiting.

[motorhead]

I'll just leave this here...

[daveismissing]

I like. The red clashes, pull some braid over the cable.
 I guess they won't let you put a baby seat there anymore anyways...

[motorhead]

I like. The red clashes, pull some braid over the cable.
 I guess they won't let you put a baby seat there anymore anyways...

I am actually using red as an accent colour in this car being a Pontiac and all;  but, I do have black nylon braid if needed.

A car seat was never going to fit up front anyway... maybe with a booster.  Not certain about the law with lap belts and being impaled on a shifter?

[daveismissing]

Used to put a car seat in the middle of the ranger's bench.Cozy.
The young'un had to shift over when I went into 4'th.

I was thinkin' more stainless braid?

[Forzfed]

Nice work, looks good!

[SuperSix]

Well done!!!