We are working on an 87 GTA and it's been gutted and cleaned and is being rehabbed. Nothing fancy, just a reasonably complete driver. Anyway, the car came with a broken radio pod and no radio and the radio plugs cut off. (yippee!) The pod is in decent shape except the radio mounting points are all broken off and missing. We'd like to see if we can somehow save this pod but need some reference pics in order to have a clear idea of how to do so. So, I am asking if anyone can provide a few decent pics that we can use for this project.

Thanks!

 

Mine happens to be sitting on my work bench at the moment, and it's in pretty good shape. I may try to super glue the cracked screw holes and/or look for other means of reinforcement.

Also a word to the wise, do not try to remove the lower vent covers (last pic). I did to clean them, and cracked a tab on both. I pressed them back in and super-glued the tab, but they wont come out again without breaking. I did successfully remove the black vent channel for cleaning.

Let me know if you need any other shots.

 

Excellent! Thank you very much.. Just what I needed.

 

Yeah, this happened to me too when I took out the gray colored vents to clean them. Luckily, I had some spare vents from the junkyard and replaced the one that got broke. Removing them never again.

 

I find that plastic does not glue well. I ended up using marine epoxy and fiberglass sheet to reenforce the broken bits. Amazon sells a plastic welder for cheap, and it works very well. I'd have gone that route if I knew about it back then

 

Thanks for the recommendation, I will have a look!

 

That's what I have. Used it on a cracked plastic trim panel. The one that overlaps the door sill plate behind the drivers seat. Worked really well. Comes with welding rods that are of different plastics.

 

^^^ Good info thanks. We have a few solvents that actually melt or fuse certain plastics together sort of like the "welders". Not sure what we will use to "build up" the missing areas but we do have some scraps from the ABS headliner we just purchased so that might be a donor.

 

When these cars could still be found at the local pick it yourself yards, almost every ‘85-‘92 Firebird I came across had cracked or broken tabs on those vents even if the radio pod was in good condition. The gray vinyl/rubber urethane material likes to shrink over time and it pulls against the vents cracking/breaking the tabs.

When the ‘85 Firebirds first came out, I marveled at the new interior redesign. Once I started poking around, I found that only the radio bezel and the console was soft touch vinyl/rubber. The lower dash and soft look switches were just hard plastic. lol! However, it was a nice interior update compared to the Camaro which still had the same old design from ‘82.

When GM finally updated the instrument cluster/lower dash area on the Camaro in ‘90, making it smoother looking, they kept the same hard edged blocky radio pod/center console. I guess GM ran out of money when they did the update for the interior on the Camaro.

 

Which plastic rod did you use? And did you weld it on the back or on the finished side? Mine is cracked in the same spot, you can just barely see it in this pic.

Does anyone know the type of plastic used for the mounting tabs on the radio pod?

 

It says on the back side what plastic that is. I think it's ABS. Can't remember but it does say. I used the white rod. They're color coded for their specific material. It worked very well. You first melt in the zig zag metal rebar, then use the rod as a filler just like a metal stick welder. Then sand it. Works far better than any glue. Were a respirator.

 

I found a pic of the repair. I need to sand it better, I rushed this because I needed the car and when the doors closed you don't see it. That piece was split wide open. Big gap. I have a 0 gauge power wire for an amplifier running along under that and when I tried to install it, it split. It was probably a 3 inch split and it had opened up well enough to see right through. I used the Zigzag metal rebar and melted in about 3 or 4 of them into the back side, then melted the plastic rod into the gap. You can see that it's fully filled and it added material that was never there so it widened out a tad to accommodate that power wire as it goes up into the sail panel and back towards the hatch area where the Amp is. All I need to do is sand it a bit better, give it another shot of SEM and press a piece of scothbrite into the wet SEM to reproduce that texture and it'll be good to go.

 

What does the back side look like?

 

Unfortunately I don't have a pic. I did but I can't find it. It's just basically the zig zag looking rebar melted into the plastic. About half way through the thickness of the material