Dash

Here's the fully renovated, original, right-hand side of the dashboard.

Ok, it has two speedometers in it and no tacho and the lefty-most speedo has a digital readout at the bottom, which is complete heresy in the eyes of the faithful, but I have the tacho somewhere in my box of bits, plus the other instruments. I've no idea where the 2nd speedo came from - must have been bought by the previous owner for some conversion plan he had.

Has a bugger of a job with the rocker hazard switch - it's a very specific model of switch and I managed to find one on e-Bay for £30 (expensive, I hear you say, but it's held on at the back with a very specific bracket that fits this model of switch and no other). 

When I unscrewed the hazard switch bracket before renovation, I put the tiny screws on the top of my drill press, knowing they'd be safe there. Well, then weren't - during some tidying up a couple of weeks ago, one of them fell on the workbench and through a crack between the planks, never to be found again. However, using a powerful welding magnet I found it a couple of days ago.

The hazard switch itself is a very fine fit, having minimal tolerances in order for it to rock. It took a bit of fiddly paring of the square hole to make it fit properly.

The spare I made from scratch is also finished, although it's not much use to me now.

The search for a centre and left-hand panel continues - snipes thus far failed. I do, however, have hopes of buying a plastic dash from a MkIV Spitfire. While I guess it may be impossible to glue veneer to it, it would make a good template for some ply panels.

E-Bay, in their wisdom, have refused to refund me for the missing centre section I bought on e-Bay and I have complained about the decision. I dare say that Evri still maintain they delivered it, but it they did then it wasn't to my address.

As for the dashboard top, which was ripped in parts, I used a heat gun to remove the black vinyl cover. The foam underneath the vinyl wasn't much cop either, so I took that off with a rotary wire brush on the grinder (made a helluva mess, just after I'd swept the garage floor). 

The problem was that the metal panel underneath now didn't match the contours of the foam covering - the foam had been moulded on the metal base in a certain shape. There was sure there was no way I could recreate that.

I have to find a way of moulding some foam into the correct shape. Rimmer's do a skin that's meant to go over the original foam and vinyl as a bodge, but £90 is a lot. 

I have no idea what it's made of or how it's contoured, but have asked. If it's fairly rigid I dare say I can put something underneath it to support it. Being plastic, it would take burr walnut vinyl, but I doubt I could get wood veneer to stick.

Having asked on a GT6 Facebook forum, it would seem some people simply used thin foam rubber and vinyl, with the result looking fine. The vent and ashtray surrounds appear to nip the foam into the correct shape. I'll wait for the burr walnut vinyl to arrive and try this method before paying £90 for one of Rimmer's skins.

Another option is to use expanding spray foam and cut it to shape with a rasp before covering it with vinyl. The problem with that is that it will dent if bashed when dry, as it has no memory. Not sure it's a good idea, except for fixing patches.

Of course, all this work on the dash, while enjoyable and instructive, is displacement activity that enables me to avoid having to either take the engine and gearbox out or lift the tub off the chassis. That said, they are jobs I'd prefer to do in warmer weather.