Project No-Flight Update
May 2007
My dash pads and dash skin finally arrived from Al Knoch (took 6 weeks). It turns out I can't use the vinyl dash skin as it was already molded for the clock cutout and all the bumps along the windshield mounting edge, which I have already smoothed out. So, I went to plan B, to paint the fiberglass part of the dash Black. It turned out to be harder than I expected as the fiberglass was very porous and had lots of small pin holes when I primed it. They were too small to fill with bondo, and trying to fill them with chopped fiber and resin didn't work either. I finally got them all filled using several heavy layers of polyester primer, and was able to put on a reasonably smooth black epoxy finish.
I had hoped that I could install the dash pads and then slip the dash into the car, but that turned out to be not possible. With the roll cage the dash has to go in through the windshield opening, and with the extra bulk of the dash pads there was not enough room for one side to drop down along the roll cage so that the other could be slipped (wedged actually) in. The best that I could do was to put the passenger pad on, trim it to match my modified dash frame, then slip the dash into the car. The driver side pad would have to be installed after the dash was in the car. I picked the driver side to install in-place, as there is more room to work on the underside than there is on the passenger side with all the electronics in the glove box opening.
The fit of the passenger side dash pad was very good, and it dropped in to place so I could install it with the normal factory pad clips.
The fit of the driver side dash pad was not very good. My old pad would drop into place and just sit there snug in the opening. The new pad I slid forward as far as I could force it, and it still isn't what I would call an acceptable fit to the opening. Since it was so hard to get the dash pad to fit the recess in the dash frame, and since I had to fasten the pad from the limited space inside the gauge opening, I fitted all of the fastener locations with Riv-Nuts. The center front I actually fitted with a stud so I could use it to help snap the dash pad into place and partially hold it while I tried to push it forward to (almost) fit the recess.
I would try some heat to help deform the dash pad's fiberglass frame, but was afraid the foam pad and vinyl would get damaged before I could get the fiberglass hot enough to soften the resin and reshape it (about 250F).
Here is a picture of the dash starting to look like a Corvette.
I am going to have to rework the passenger side dash insert to get it to fit to the dash pads. I patterned the passenger side panel from a glove box frame I have, but that doesn't fit the pad very well. By chance the driver side one, which I estimated from the fiberglass frame, fit fine. I've got it installed, but still need a 45 degree adapter to be able to hook up the braided pressure feed line.
