I have been putting off recovering this padded dash for a while.
Knowing that I tend to overthink things and that my man hands aren’t well suited for this type of project, I asked my sister to help. She is super crafty and much better at those types of things than I am.
I had a long weekend away visiting family. I brought the dash pad, remaining roll of vinyl, and a bag full of glue, clothes pins, binder clips, and chopsticks with me. The chopsticks were to help push the vinyl down into the tighter creases in the dash.
In doing some further research, we decided that 3m Super 77 spray adhesive (Amazon link) would be the best way to go for long term adhesion.
The plan
My original idea was to get the top edge of the dash pad covered and let that sit. Once the bond is strong enough, move down, from top to bottom, affixing a little bit at a time. That would leave all of the complicated bends and contours on the face of the dash to be tackled later on.
My sister’s idea was to start in the center of the dash face, where the most complicated parts are, and work our way out from there. That was, in theory, a much better way of doing it. Somewhere along the line, we also decided to just spray the whole thing down at once, rather than doing it a little bit at a time.
And we’re off!
The process went exactly as you would expect, a nearly immediate disaster.
For a start, we didn’t get the vinyl positioned properly, to line up with where I had already started cutting in the contours of the air vents in the top edge. We then had to start cutting around the openings, like the glove box, radio, and speedometer to be able to push the vinyl into place. So, with it starting in the wrong position and now being cut even more than it was before, we quickly gave up on it.
Now I have this:
The crumbly old rubber dash pad is also now covered in spray glue for life.
So, I immediately went on the hunt for a better price than the $300 at jbugs. I found a seller on eBay that I had ordered from once or twice before and a new padded dash was only $110.
I will update here once the new dash pad is delivered.
On a brighter note…
My dad and I went out to a local U Pull It junkyard to walk around and look at cars and see if there’s anything we need. Years ago, last time I had a Ranger, it had no bed liner. We picked one up at the junkyard for $30-40, which was a steal.
The Ranger I have now has a nice rubber mat in the bed, but again, no bed liner. Once again, we were able to find a really nice one from a comparable year and it was $43.
I had to laugh, seeing the Ford bed liner in the back of my dad’s old Tundra.
We got it mounted up in the Ranger with little drama.
The rubber mat will need to be cut around the edges for a better fit. It wasn’t designed to be used with a bed liner.
I like the idea of not having stuff slide around back there, especially bags of trash going to the dump.
