Hey everyone,
I am about to undertake making some door speaker pods. I dont want to carpet them. I want to make them match the dark grey plastics that are in my car. How can I get that same pattern into a different material? Is there a fabric that will match it closely?

Thanks,
Mark B

 

I'm hoping you get a response to your question. I have been wondering about that for years. There has to be a way.

I have been thinking about buying the book about molding plastic. I think they offer it in the Eastwood catalog.

 

there was a few threads about this in the body and interior section...
I posted in one about fixing cracks in a dash, then trying to match the texture... (same sorta idea).... One suggestion was rubberized undercoating, since it gives a bumpy appearance... Haven't tried it yet though...

 

look here: http://www.charlestonracing.com/XMB/...id=301#pid5109


near the bottom of the page (after you go thru all the BS) theres a pic of a guy i know that had custom gaugepods made..

it used this spray stuff (links and pics in thread)

 

AWESOME!! Now I have to get to work!

If anyone else goes to that thread... Go to page 2 for the pics & top of page 3 for the link.

 

This is great. I have been wanting to build a fiberglass dash for my camaro, but I wanted to get the original texture to give it a factory look.

This also means a person could to wheels tubs and build new interior pieces over the tubs. Still having that factory look.

 

now that i have a couple more seconds, just incase that thread disappears:



He used SEM Texture Paint.

to put the texture on these fiberglass gauge pods:

 

wow...that stuff is awesome! i might have to order some of it...

 

if you are after flat plastic they sell that with the pattern.i will be using that stuff to make my new guae cluster (in a million years when i can drop $600 on guages)

 

There's a product out there called Plastex - a plastic repair resin product (VERY easy to use). Initially marketed to the crotch rocket croud for repairing their (frequently) broken plastix effects. Also works good for boat and aircraft reapirs. Expensive, but does a good job. In their higher end kits they include a piece of "molding putty". This stuff is like a medium hard rubber until you heat it to 120 degrees, and then it gets soft and pliable, and is fine enough to take the fingerprints off your fingers and transfer them to the plastic resin stuff!! This putty was included specifically for the purpose of recreating original textures in small repairs.

It would be a lot more work to get that entire surface textured, and the previously mentioned ideas might work better - but check this stuff out at least. I've seen it at the local Harbor Freight (in Camarillo, CA) and I have a vey good friend who is a distributor - if you can't find it any other way I'll be happy to put you in touch with him.

Jonathan

 

i was all excited until i saw it was sem texture coating. i would like to see how that was done with the guage pod. i have the sem texture paint in black and it looks absolutely nothing like the above. granted it's black and does have SOME texture, but nothing like the above...?

 

I use sure-tex , but it's gray so you have to paint it. Unless your interior is gray

 

The Plastex will definitely give you the original texture, but it would be VERY time and effort consuming to do it, simply because it would be a large piece to fabricate. The putty is really designed to repair small areas, not to fabricate entire pieces.

 

I haven't tried this yet for interior parts, but a little while back at Home Depot, I picked up some Rustoleum spray can textured finish paint for a home project.

It gave a very nice textured finish. I liked it so well that I picked up some in black to use on the valve covers of my Grand National.

It only comes in a limited choice of colors. To paint your choice over it, you would have to use a number of really light coats to avoid filling the texture too much. Thickness of top coats could be used to get the texture you want.

David
Lake Worth, FL
gnatshop@bellsouth.net

 

i worked at a detail shop for a while and we used to have to repair some cracked dash pads all we really would was sew it back togeather then put a flexible glue over it but to get the same pattern thats on the rest of the dash we would make almost a rubber stamp by spraying some vinyl shine on a clean part of the dash then putting the rubber glue on a small peice of wood and pressing it wher ethe vinyl shine is (stops it from sticking) then we would pull it up and we would have a stamp of the pattern, then we would just stamp it on the part with the vinyl repair glue (semi hardend) ..... ive only dont it twice first time was a total mess and the second time came out perfect. this way is only good for small areas though

 

ive used wrinkle paint dried with a heat gun
then painted over that
it worked pretty good but the grain is a little larger looking than stock

its worth buying a bottle and testing it on something to see what you think