Painting dash trim advice

[Zach3800]

Lee here you go

[GR8racingfool]

What I did was wash the dash well, making sure to remove any and all "cleaners" that were or may have been used on it. Warm soapy dish soap works wonders.

When its dry, you want to spray an adhesion promoter onto the plastic. I bought some "BULL DOG ADHESION PROMOTER" from O'Reillys and follow the instructions on the can. Then, choose what color paint you want. I used the red-ist red I could get through Krylon. My paint code of the red is: 2108 "Banner Red Gloss". I think I used about 3-4 light coats to fully cover it. Came out good IMO.

I changed my dash, and removed my DIC and made a gauge pod that holds 3 after market gauges. This is the prototype test fit:




Added primer:



all done!


I had two gauges mounted in the center storage hole, and you can see the old holes left behind in that last picture. So for the mean time I made a carbon fiber cover to hide the holes till my "new" dash is done.


Many sand the dash before paint, but I didn't, and the paint laid smooth, and stuck good. Its been on my dash since 2001, so were pushing 7 years with a rattle can paint job. So I call that pretty damn good.

I did not clear coat my dash because I did not want it to be shinny, and reflect light while driving. I consider a shinny dash a driving hazard.

Good luck and enjoy the project with what ever route you go!

~F~

[IndeedSS]

Wow so many different ways to achieve the same result. It's nice to know about the options and that they all work.

As a side note ~F~, that is a good point about the reflective properties of the clear coat. I would hate that myself. Drew is using a black metallic paint , which may be a little annoying even w/o clear coating.

Thanks again everyone for the help.