How I fixed the cracks in my dash.

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Brandon_Lutz

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Like most of us from the south or hot and sunny climates, my 95's dash was cracked in several places after 27 years of service, most of that spent on the farm.

I previously tried plastic welding my dash but the cracks reopened, mainly because all of the plastic broke out of the defrost grill area and there was nothing to hold the front of the dash down by the windshield. As a result, the vibrations from normal driving shook them open again.

The original plan was to weld them back together by melting the plastic and tacking the cracks closed and then put a cover on top. However, when the cracks opened back up, I knew the cover i wanted to use would most likely come unglued from the dash, so I decided to try a different method of fixing the cracks and that was to use my new Astro Pneumatic hot staple gun to mechanically bind the cracks together. I purchased mine on Amazon here: AP Hot Staple Gun

I first cleaned the dash and sanded down the surface of the cracks to remove any burrs. The AP hot staple gun came with a bag of three different types of staples and I used all 3 types during the repair process. I used one hand and some painters tape to hold the cracks together and then I began to staple them them closed.

I first started with the area above my radio as that whole piece had broken out of the dash. I put it back into place, held in with some painters tape and then began stapling it back together, as this was the easiest and flattest area to work with. The process is fairly simple, put your desired staple into the tip of the gun, pull the trigger and then sink the staple into the plastic until the bottom of the staple sinks below the surface/halfway though the panel. Release the trigger, wait a couple of seconds and pull the gun straight back and the staple should remain behind.

Couple shots of my dash looking like it was attacked by a metal porcupine

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You can see here how I reattached the biggest part of my dash that was broken. For the rest of the dash I basically repeated the steps above for the other 3 areas that had cracks in them. Once you are done stapling, you will need to trim off the parts of the staples sticking up in the air with a good pair of side cutters. (Don't use the ones that come in the kit, they are garbage).

Once you are done with cutting off the exposed parts of the staples, you will have some bumps left over that will need to be sanded/ground down. I found the easiest way to do this was to take my angle grinder with a 150 grit flap disk and run it over the repaired areas. This not only flattened out anything metal that was sticking up, it smoothed out the plastic and even melted it a little bit, somewhat helping fill in the cracks.

For extra peace of mind, I then filled in the cracks with two part epoxy, let it set overnight and then sanded the areas back down to the original surface of the dash. Here are some of the results:

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Obviously when this is all said and done, it is not the prettiest of sights for the interior, however I'm planning on covering the dash with a Dashskin/Precision Dash Covers cover. It is a really nice cover and once installed you really can't tell it is there if you do it correctly. The cover also has the grill inserts for the defrost area and the screw holes, so I will be able to secure the front of the dash again. I plan to install this weekend and will update the thread once that is done.
 
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bretcopsey

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I like your approach of repairing in place, I don’t think I would have the patience to pull the dash. Interested to see what you’re planning to repair the defrost vent section. Mine is broken at all three mounting points in that area and the grate is beginning to disintegrate. Been looking for a good solution.
 

Brandon_Lutz

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NICE!

I had no idea such a tool existed......
I didn't either until earlier this year. What is nice about it is that it came with 3 sets of staples. One type for flat areas needing re-enforcing, another type for outside corners and then another type for inside corners. It's a really handy tool that is super easy to use, provided you have the room to work. As I got closer to the bottom of the windshield for the forward-most crack repair, I just angled the tool and put the staples in at an angle. Probably took me 15 minutes to fix the cracks.
 

Brandon_Lutz

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Interested to see what you’re planning to repair the defrost vent section. Mine is broken at all three mounting points in that area and the grate is beginning to disintegrate. Been looking for a good solution.
The new dashskin cover has that section molded into the cover. It is why I chose them over a Coverlay skin which does not have that. The new cover has the holes pre-drilled for running your screws in to help secure it the metal support beneath the dash. I plan to reinforce the holes behind the cover with either some stick on felt pads or some faucet repair grommets before I run the screws through. This will help it stand at the right depth and absorb vibrations better. I also have an OER rattle stop kit from LMCtruck that I'm going to install as well to help keep everything secure.

I'll post more pictures this weekend with how I install the dash cover and how I plan to reinforce the 3 mounting holes for the screws.
 
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