Thread: 2002 Mazda Protege5

very slick looking lcd, looks like it was meant to be there from the start!

Very nice and clean setup. Lcd does look stock.

The screen looks amazing. Do you have any construction pics of the screen enclosure?

Looks REALLY nice, I love how that color matches the gauge faces. Is it fiberglassed?

Awesome install!! Looks really smooth.

I too would love to see some construction pics and step by steps. Did you make that entire panel out of bondo or did you use some fiberglass? How did you make the mold for it?

I didnt use a mold for anything. I bought a spare radio trim piece identical to mine (so that I can go back to stock if needed). I took the dscustoms screen and chopped off the sides to make it fit in the hole. I used some adhesive to hold the LCD frame in place before I applied bondo to it. I only used bondo, no fiberglass. Fiberglass is more for custom sub boxes or something along those lines where you need to make something new. Bondo is more for filling gaps and holes. After I applied the bondo and shaped it to the basic shape I wanted I sanded the crap out of it going in steps to fine sand paper and then wet sanding at 400 grit. then I sprayed 2 coats of primer and wet sanded that and had it painted. It took a lot of patience and I am a perfectionist so it also took a lot of time.

The only construction pics I have is when it was sanded after it was primered and that looks basically the same except its not painted the right color. The member traitorhound on this board has the same car as I do and is attempting the same LCD install with some of my directions. Hopefully he will take a few more pics along the way.

bondo will crack along seam where it joints with plastic. I can gurantee your dash will start to crack sooner or later especially in a car where there's always viberation. Bondo doesnt flex well. Fiberglass rasin does. The way around the cracking is lay 6-8 thin coats of fiberglass rasin over the whole dash bezel, the bondo parts and unbondoed plastic then sand it smooth with 400-800 grid wet sand paper. Also that white paint makes your monitor stick out like a sore thumb. Couldnt you color match it with the rest of your dash? That would look even more stock than the white finish. BTW nice job though. I can understand the no "in process" pictures. When I did my dash, I didnt have time to take pictures either. I only took a few.

Edit: I shouldnt judge you on the color thing. My bad. From the your responds below, I can understand the colors in the pictures doesnt match the colors in real life. Alot of my pics show different colors for the bezels I color matched. But in real life it's exact match. I guess the reflections are different from the painted dash and the factory dash.

The bondo will not crack if the two pieces of plastic were adhered rock hard to begin with and the edges were sanded rough before adding the bondo. It wasnt a thin OR thick layer of bondo, I used the right ammount and didn't add more than needed. The plastic trim wasn't flimsey to begin with, and is even more solid after adding the LCD trim.

And you must not see the first pic of the dash, the radio trim was color matched to the STOCK color it was. It matches the cup holders and window controls. The gauges are white and the trim is metallic silver (darker in person than the pictures show). It looks just as stock as the German cars with navigation systems in the dash.