refurbishing the dashboard pad for a 1997 model 80 (1 Viewer)

[John Young]

I've been working on a pair of diesel 80s here in Dubai. One is a turbo diesel RHD to LHD conversion which sometimes feels like it never will be done, and the other is one I bought from Oman and imported to the UAE. I've been talking about both of them in the same thread for a while now and most recently I've been focusing on the Omani truck which had an aircon issue requiring dropping the evaporator. I've taken the opportunity to go and and pull the dash apart and clean everything and see what I've got. Part of the reason was also to address cracks in the dash pad. Here's a link to the other thread for those that are interested.

Here's the starting point of the dash for the 1997 Omani diesel:

And as you can see the cracks were pretty typical:

There were six cracks like this an a hole about the size of a dime.

My general plan is to cover the top part of the dashpad with camel leather. Based on a couple of years experience now I think it should work pretty well for this application and be pretty resistant to heat and sun. Plus I don't plan on storing the truck outside. Probably marine vinyl would be a more logical choice, but I like camel leather.

The first part of the job was to enlarge the cracks to the point where it would be possible to level them with filler (the edges curl up a little on these sun-baked cracks), remove the dirty damaged foam under the cracks and then fill. The best tool I've found is a diamond ball bit on a dremel mototool. This vinyl is pretty brittle and the diamond ball bit is a little slow but it does not tear things up.

This is a messy process.

I'd recommend doing this outside if you can.

The biggest crack requiring the most removal was in the middle and about an inch wide. I also found that using a little scotchbrite wheel to do the smoothing and final cleaning worked well.

 

[John Young]

I know there are specialty flexible epoxy fillers for dash cracks but that is the kind of thing we don't get to the best of my knowledge here in Dubai. So I was looking for something with the right adhesion qualities and approximately the right rubbery hardness roughly matching the flexiblity of the existing pad itself. I found that using black gasket RTV works really well. It sets up fast and adheres well to the foam and you can do multiple coats--it is a little hard to do in one go.

I used the blade from a boxcutter as a spreader and that worked pretty well. You can see that it is not quite perfect, but camel leather is pretty thick and I think it should be fine. And besides, I'm not shooting for absolute perfection. These are desert trucks and always are going to show some of their history.

I'm waiting for the last coat of RTV to harden up and then I will look at which of the camel leather that I have on-hand will work. I leave for the US in about a week and I want to get the truck back together before the trip, so there is a lot to do....

 

[John Young]

When I looked through the supply of camel leather I found I really had only one option that was big enough.

It is not perfect but I actually prefer hides that show it is a natural product.

I decided to go ahead and cut to the back of the dash pad.

And then do a temporary glue up so I can cut the other portions. I use PVA glue which is temporarily water soluble and very forgiving. Love the stuff. It has worked great on the steering wheels and other things I have done for the cruisers and it has held up very well.

I'm gonna let this dry completely and head over to the warehouse to work on the mechanical bits and getting the damn wiring loom back into the right place. 80's wiring is so crowded under the dash. The plain jane Middle East modesl without the automatic climate control are a bit easier, but still....

 

[John Young]

Today I started working slowly around the edges of the pad with the new leather.

The sewing was a bit challenging because I was stretching the leather at the seme time as marking for the little fold over at the bottom.

 

[surfpig]

Camel hide... I love it!

 

[John Young]

I made some more progress over the long Eid holiday here in Dubai.

I confess, I find this kind of work quite relaxing. And rewarding as you see how it comes along. I've already made a few mistakes and the end result won't be perfect, but it will be unique and it won't have horrible cracks to look at when I drive.

 

[John Young]

I'm pretty much done with the refurb now.

I took it back over to the warehouse and put all the screws back in and pulled the tabs tight and twisted them

 

[thecapedcapper]

Looks great, I dig DIY upholstery - where you folded over the edge did you go into the dash or just curve it over and sew it to itself?

 

[John Young]

Looks great, I dig DIY upholstery - where you folded over the edge did you go into the dash or just curve it over and sew it to itself?

Thank you!
The leather is quite thick; about 1/8 inch, but even so when you fold it you end up with a little less than 1/4 inch thick. I did not dig into the foam to level it but now that you mention it, that may have been a good idea. Here's a photo showing some detail:

I didn't put the dash back in this evening. I thought it better to see if there were any aircon leaks before doing that. Glad I did because it turned out that the compressor had a leak. A new Toyota unit would be about 1800 AED or about 500 USD if it were available, but my magic parts guy could not find one, so it was off to the scrapyards where I found this:

I paid 250 AED or about 80 bucks. It spun freely and pumped air so I'm hopeful. With some luck the guys will put it in and I will then put the dash back in and have a driving car again.

 

[John Young]

Ok, so it has been a while.

The dash on the Omani 80 has gotten a bit soiled. In retrospect using such a light color was a bit of an error. I am going to dye it or redo it.

Meantime, the Holy Truck dash was taken out to deal with the heater core (yes every SINGLE 80 in the Middle East has bypassed heater cores, but the Holy Truck is shortly going to Florida to be a daily for my younger boy.)

Anyways, I am going to do this one a bit differently. I'm only going to cover the damaged portions of the dashpad.

One thing I did differently this time is to mark the spots where hard to see fasteners go with some flourescent paint.

 

[John Young]

Here's the pad itself:

This pad was not as bad as the Omani, but still really unsightly.

I thought I would try RTV gasket sealer. This was a mistake.

RTV gasket stuff does not really stick.

 

[John Young]

First I sanded. The goal to get to a level surface. The edges of the cracks are raised up and needed to be knocked down.

And I gave it a real try with the RTV gasket material.

I ended up sanding it all off again.

What DOES stick really well and remains flexible is PVA glue. The same stuff that is used to bind books.

I had an old bottle with very stiff glue that was great for filling the cracks

 

[John Young]

It also dries petty clear.

It took a few coats but ended up smooth and level.

The next step was to decide where the pad edges would be. I used a water washable pen to mark by hand first

And then I started making the pattern by using masking tape to define the edges.

Then to give the patern some structure I taped down thin cardboard.

 

[John Young]

Then I gently lifted up the edges and put some more thin cardboard under the edges and cut to the edge of the tape. Here's the end result:

Fortunately I found a large and nice piece of camel leather at the tannery outside Abu Dhabi to use for this project.

Before cutting out the leather I needed to figure out how much larger the leather had to be to make the edges. To do that I did a couple of test edges, both a sharp corner and a straight bit.

I found that for this thickness of leather I needed a border of 2cm or three quarters of an inch. I laid that out using the sharp edge of a micrometer locked to that distance. Worked fine for marking leather enough to make a visible line.

I skived down the edge of the leather to make it easier to fold and glued it in the folded position and bit bit bit worked my way around punching holes. The hole punching actually head the edge together pretty well.

 

[John Young]

Then it was time to sew the edges. I played with a contracsting thead:

But in the words of a friend in Japan:, yeah that look a little too racing" so black thread it is.

Sewing took a good long time over a couple of days to do it carefully., but it turned out nicely.

Then disaster struck! The pad fell off the counter when I was out of the room and it cracked the skin in new places and bent the underlying sheet metal.

I decided to just go with it after coating it again with some more PVA glue. Should be pretty ok, but it was very annoying.

Time to take the big step of gluing/

 

[John Young]

I started with the front edge:

And while it was drying I was able to move it around and mould it to the countors of the dash pad.

After the front was secure I gave a nice coating of PVA glue, which is water washable until it cures, BTW., and worked my way back.

 

[John Young]

It's not perfect but the overall result was pretty nice looking, I think.

This evening I spent my time cleaning the plastic dash and doing a small repair.

At some point in the history of this truck some bonehead had actually cut this bit of support. I fixed it with some wire and then coated that with JB Weld to immobilze it.

And now it is time to trim the back edge of the pad and install it on the plastic dash. Tomorrow.

 

[John Young]

The last item was the grab bar.

 

[John Young]

And now to install the pad and grab bar:

 

[John Young]

Now wrapped up until re-installation

I also took the time to take the clock and face panel apart and clean both with plastic polish. The amount of dust -inside- the clock module was really surprising. Glad I opened it up to clean inside.