James Chimney

I have a line on a used dash, I want to recover in leather my self, I know they make a metal vent cover but can you get at the bottom/underneath of the dash for glueing? I would fill any cracks with silicone, then install the leather.
I know this has been discussed before but I have never seen any thing about the under side of these vents

szabon

I would love to see an actual wright up on how to do a whole dash recovery from scratch. We kind of have bits and pieces everywhere.....If you are doing this, take pics and post. It would be super helpful....

James Chimney

Will do

JohnKoaWood

You need to bend up the metal tabs on the underside of the vent, remove the plastic vent, drill the holes for the metal strips studs, mount the strip, re-install the vent, and bend the tabs back down... easy as kitten pie!

we didn't take many pictures when we did my first one, but I DO have a second re-cover coming up...

BTW, I cleaned up teh strip with paint thinner, let it dry, used rattle can flat black to spray the strip... has held up great for almost a year now!

Couple places to be careful to bodn down the new skin:

left of the gauge cluster... couple of compund curves here that will want to lift if not bonded really well
lowest edge of the dash board... I need to re-glue mine
the glove box door... its a real pain to cover well because of the tight radiuses on the edges


the main body of the dash is actually pretty easy to cover well, just make sure you smooth out the dash surface real well... I used angel hair infused body filler for this, and smoothed the entire dash... other than the lower edge and a small bubble to the left of the dash cluster it has held up really well, and noone even notices the flaws that I see every time I get into the car!

kens_74911s

Consider that the leather will shrink and dry out on you. Have done a leather dash and other parts on my 911 only to need to pull it all off and go back with vinyl when the leather got sun dried and pulled loose. If you use leather it should be firmly stapled or screwed down on the back side and should not have top side convex curves to conform to.

kens_74911s

You do not want silicone in those cracks you wont get anytning to bond to it .

Crimson Nape Racing

I'm not sure exactly what your asking, but the metal defroster vent I installed (from Classic 9) bolts to the dash. Very easy to reach the bolts on the bottom of the dash - just turn it over while it's on your work bench . Also, the old plastic cover needs to come off and you use Bondo (IIRC) to fill the cracks. Clarks garage has a good write-up on how to remove the dash. Time consuming but pretty easy. My 17 YO daughter & I recovered her dash over a weekend.

James Chimney

I was asking can I drape the leather or vinyl over the vent holes and cut them and glue them under with out that "defroster vent ", has any one done that?

Crimson Nape Racing

those vent holes are really small. I think it would be virtually impossible to do it that way (and look decent). The metal vent was less than $100 and worth every penny.

Duston944

I tried to do just that and after a month in the heat, this is the result. Now i need the vent trim and I have to pull the dash again to fix this mess. Should have used a high temp glue.