Project "River Truck" - CCLB 4x4

[arrover]

First step was to cut off the parts of the dash next to the cracks. This where the dash plastic was curled up and it would have made the new dash material not lay flat. Then cut out the foam in the widened crack.

[arrover]

A previous owner already has cut speaker holes all four lower doors so I'm going to use those locations. I welded in plates over the stock speaker locations.

[arrover]

Then I used expanding foam to fill the cracks and speaker locations. After it cured I cut it off almost flush with the dash and sanded it down the rest of the way flush. I used the regular expanding foam, not the big gap filler/high expanding.

[arrover]

Ibought 3 yards of material and some 3M "Foam Fast 74" glue at Hancock Fabrics. I chose a fabric that feels and looks kind of like suede. I figured that it would hide imperfections in the dash underneath. It's backed by a black felt so it helps hide bumps in the dash. The downside is that you can see the black felt on some of the cut edges. Hancock Fabrics also has some nice headliner material there that I'll probably be buying sometime....

[arrover]

And..... here it is sitting in the truck. The dash pad and gauges are just sitting there not screwed down. I think it turned out fair. It's fine for the purpose of this truck but its far from perfect. The project was harder and much more time consuming than I expected it to be. I probably have 10-12 hours in this but only $36.84. The hardest part of the project is figuring out the cuts and seams. I also minorly screwed up gluing the material down and it caused some small wrinkles on the top of the dash. I still need to paint the defroster vents.

[arrover]

I built a video that gives a little more detail on the dash recover project:

How to Recover Your Dash - 1973-1987 GM Truck -...