hello everyone, im one of them people that cant ever leave well enough alone so im planning on making my own custom dash and was wondering if there were any pointers you could give me. heres what i was thinking of doing. make cardboard pieces of the additions i want. secure it down to the current dash. use putty or some sort of molding foam to make the nice contours then remove the entire dash with this add on stuff then fiberglass it. remove the old insides and fill it with a foam or something then simply make the mounting frame for it and all my gear to go in it. does this sound right or is there a better way to do this?

 

is this for an RX-7?

 

I'm no expert, but I've always wondered if it'd be difficult to get a spare dash, coat it with release wax, lay the glass over it, then take the part and modify it by creating molds of the shaped additions you require, then cutting out and glassing those into the dash form you made. Then sand, prime and gelcoat.



That's what I always wanted to try. The neat thing about 'glass is that if you screw it up a little, you can cut it up, fix it and glass the seams, no problem.



Anyhow, Robx-7 should comment here because he's the official glass master.

 

if you had a spare dash to play with you could use blocks of foam and bodyfiller to shape what you wanted, attatch them to the dash, then make a mold from that.



if your making one from nothing, then its lots of time, and any combo of cardboard,formica,sheet metal, bondo, foam or anything else you could shape, mold release wax,gelcoats,more bodyfiller, more wax, fiberglass, and resins, then figuring out how to mount it to the car and what kind of final finish to put on it.



in other words-LOTS of time, chemicals and dust.

 

So, you're implying one needs the female mold of the dash to create a part? Does it work the other way around too? Or is that just too hard?

 

if you dont have something to make a mold from, then you must create it from scratch using whatever you can, if you got a mold from someone then all you would need to do is lay up the part and pop it out.



the part you make to create a mold is called a "plug"

a mold is a mold.

 

Ah, I see now!

 

i have a spare FD dash.......

 

I too have a spare dash (fc). How difficult is it to make a mold, as compared to actually laying fiber? What I'm getting at is, could I make a mold, then take it to someone who does fiberglass and have them make a new dash for me?

 

the hard part is making the mold, if you get that far make the part yourself



keep in mind the finished product needs a way to secure the dash to the vehicle, as well as the ability to mount gauges and what not to it



unless you just wanted to make a cosmetic overlay