1971 K10 Stepside - Getting a Roller Roadworthy

[D.B]

Got to hand it to you PJ, that dash repair turned out really nice. I wish I had that skill. I tried welding one time, and someone told me I booger weld. So, I leave it to the professionals.

[loudchevy]

Originally Posted by pjmoreland

Installed a new dash pad this evening. All of the rust repairs on the dash are completely concealed, thankfully. It was a bit of a battle to get the front four screws to line up with the clips on the dash.

Dash looks great! Is the dash a reproduction? If so, where did you get it?

[pjmoreland]

Originally Posted by jaros44sr

Dash repair come out great, I can’t see where it was welded

Thank you. You can see the patch panel welds in person of you look closely, but they're not obvious.

[pjmoreland]

Thanks for the compliments, guys. I got the patch panel from Burnsy01. He cut it out of a donor truck.

['68OrangeSunshine]

Originally Posted by pjmoreland

Installed a new dash pad this evening. All of the rust repairs on the dash are completely concealed, thankfully. It was a bit of a battle to get the front four screws to line up with the clips on the dash.

That's tough even on a truck w/o a Frankensteined front dash.
I once had to send back a new dash pad from Brothers because the extreme left stud was slagged. [Either defective or hit with a high heat source melting off the threads and leaving an ugly blob head.] They grudgingly sent me a new one, but it wasted my time. This was on the '71 Jimmy.

Years earlier -- before all the repop vendors [1980s] -- I pulled off the OEM dash pad, and chipped away all the brittle old Fawn vinyl. I had just reupholsrered the '69 T-Bird seat in the Orange Stepside with some red/brown ''Saddle'' vinyl and there was leftover material. I shot the bare foam on the pad with 3M 77 aerosol glue, and shot the off side of the vinyl with the same stuff. A mist of water sprayed over the pad allowed some correction as I affixed the new skin over the old pad. On the ends I made ''Darts'' and used leather rivets to secure the folds.
Still holding up some 40 years later.

Now that my Sun Visors need recovering, I don't think there's enough scrap materal left for that.

[pjmoreland]

Originally Posted by '68OrangeSunshine

That's tough even on a truck w/o a Frankensteined front dash.
I once had to send back a new dash pad from Brothers because the extreme left stud was slagged. [Either defective or hit with a high heat source melting off the threads and leaving an ugly blob head.] They grudgingly sent me a new one, but it wasted my time. This was on the '71 Jimmy.

Years earlier -- before all the repop vendors [1980s] -- I pulled off the OEM dash pad, and chipped away all the brittle old Fawn vinyl. I had just reupholsrered the '69 T-Bird seat in the Orange Stepside with some red/brown ''Saddle'' vinyl and there was leftover material. I shot the bare foam on the pad with 3M 77 aerosol glue, and shot the off side of the vinyl with the same stuff. A mist of water sprayed over the pad allowed some correction as I affixed the new skin over the old pad. On the ends I made ''Darts'' and used leather rivets to secure the folds.
Still holding up some 40 years later.

Now that my Sun Visors need recovering, I don't think there's enough scrap materal left for that.

I like the idea of saving the original dash pad. The one that was in this truck had been re-covered like you did at some point in the past. A couple of decades of sitting without a windshield did it in though. It just crumbled when I removed it.