has anyone painted their dash pad with interior dye? if so any pics

 

they make spray paint for vinyl.

 

why would you want to do that??

 

if you need to resurface your dash pad for whatever reason (like a repair) the best thing to use is spray on bedliner. it will match the color and texture of the factory almost exactly

 

Yes I have used interior paint or dye on my dash after I repaired a small crack in my dash. But before spraying it I cleaned the surface with paint thinner to remove all wax and grease. Don't use spray on bedliner, Thats a stupid idea. And don't use the gloss paint. use semi gloss. I don't have pics but mine came out perfect.

 

ok, i'll bite.

can you with all of your experience tell me one good reason why using bedliner (which matches the color, texture and gloss of the factory dash pad exactly) is a stupid idea?

here's some photos I did of a repair, and then painted the entire pad with spray on bedliner. light coats...

 

i've thought about making a mold of the dash pad and fabbing one in fibreglass. then take it down and have it painted to match the car. kind of my throw-back to the 50's. never understood why the dashes weren't made with a more durable material. as for the fab idea, just never got to it. maybe one day.

 

Third gens are between 20 to 30 years old.
How durable and long lasting would you like it to be?

The problem with dashes is not the foam, but the padding!
After years of "armorall" and whatever you use, that all will eventually soak past the vinyl
and into the foam. When the foam gets old it starts to shrink and it pulls on the vinyl that is glued to it. That is where most of the cracks start - underneath the vinyl.

Added to the equation is that the vinyl itself is getting brittle.
20 - 30 years in the sun or dealing with the extremely high temps from a locked car in the summer to the varying degrees of the tundra temperatures of the winter.
Nothing lasts forever.

Yes, they do make vinyl paint or dye, but with all the "preservatives" applied over the years the chance of fisheyes and other such non desirable results will probably occur.
Plus once it goes out in the sun it will probably look tye dyed eventually

Bedliner?
Never thought of it, who knows?
Curious how long it would last?

I just recover mine.
They do not look exactly like the factory, but they do look good!

 

Well as i mentioned it would be a throw back to the 50's.... i can tell you right now i will never had to worry about a cracked dash on a 57 chevy. the paint may fade it may be brittle and flake off but the dash will never break (unless the car itself is screwed). just prime and paint and back on the road it goes.... that's how the dashes should have been on these cars, but then again car companies never think people will hang on to a car longer than 7-10 years any way, at-least that's what they hope for. another example is my wife's old cavalier.... 2003, by 2007 the dash pad was cracked.... not durable at all.

 

I'm pretty sure it was a government regulation against metal dashes... My 58 has the same kind of dash you are talking about

 

bedliner dash looks great

 

Not going to argue the laws. My only point is there are more durable materials that could/should have been used. Nice looking 58 Dash By the way, be interested to see the rest of the car.

 

it's a work in progress.

http://ourimpala.com

 

58 Mark - what did you use to fix cracks ?

 

Evercoat urethane adhesive

 

Your bedliner dash looks excellent. I would never have thought of that. What brand did you use? I would assume not all brands create the same texture...?

 

I used duplicolor. (blue can)

It's very fine, not globby like so many of them. that makes it a terrible option for a bedliner, but excellent for a dash LOL

 

Cool, good to know for future reference. Thanks. :-)

 

Thanks for the idea 58mark. My dash was in decent shape but the vinyl was worn and cracking in some areas and the previous owner had a gps stuck on the dash. When he ripped it off, the vinyl came with as you can see. I used two light coats of Duplicolor spray on bed liner and couldn't be happier with the result. The dash pad looks brand new and even better than factory.

 

I gotta admit...if someone told me to try spray-on bed liner on a dash...my initial reaction was "step away from the crack pipe"..lol

But it looks amazingly good!

 

I was a little weary at first too but with the price of a new dash pad, i figured it was worth a shot. I had to sand out a few imperfections from the first coat so I new if I needed to I could sand the whole thing off and try a different type of paint but I am happy with the result. This stuff does seem like it would make a poor bed liner though...

 

I had mine painted about 8 years ago, but I actually used a cover then sanded and painted the cover so that the stripes came through the windshield. Cover ended up warping in the sun, so a I scrapped it and went back to normal dash pad.