Thread: Fiberglassing over a vinyl dash

Don't glass on top of the vinyl as it just wont stick properly. You could have a hard job getting it to stick the plastic depending what type it is. To give it as good a chance as you can make sure you give it a good sand with some rough paper.
You can actually buy vinyl repair kits that will sort the cracks nicely. They come with embossed paper, you put the goo on the cracks then use the embossed paper that matches the original pattern. If done properly its an invisible repair.

Thats pretty cool I didnt know about that. The only problem is I am trying to glass in a triple guage pod to the dash as well. So Im going to have to use resin and fiberglass. Which i need to figure out how to stick

you could try an adhesion promoter if you need to stick stuff to vinyl. They normally use silanes which act a bridge between two incompatible materials. you should be able to get some in a place that sells car paints for helping the paint sitck to plastics. not saying it will work but it may and it is chemical so much better than mechanical keying.

Ill go check on something like that, im not in a hurry since I dont drive the car. What do you mean by mechanical keying?

Cant you find some way to bond it on the inside? Kinda like an L from the underside of the dash through a hole to the inside of the pod? I would say as you want it as a show car you would probably be better to strip the dash. If you want a patterned dash then once you have it all done either get it re-covered or have a look at some of the textured paints that are available.

mechanical keying is roughing up the surface so the resin 'keys' into the grooves. it isnt perfect as there is no chemical bonding but it is widely used and sometimes the only option but best used in conjunction with an adhesion promoter cos then you have a greater surface area and mechancial gripping.

just rip the vinyl/foam off of the plastic and go from there, once you get down to that plastic you can really change the look of your dash which will make for a fun project

Thanks for the advice guys. I just wanted to do this right lol. Ive done fiberglass sub boxes but never built ontop of an existing structure before. Thanks for the help. I will prob try and rip vinyl and foam off, rough up the plastic and use an adhesion promoter. Thanks a bunch.

Ive started working on it, seems the foam mostly shapes the dash, which i like, so I might just completely soak it in resin till its hard too keep the shape. Plus the under plastic dash is a weird shape. Ill update on it lata.