New Dash Installed

The rusted out dash was replaced this weekend. I chose to replace all of the material from the horizontal split line inside the car under the dash pad forward to the hood. The area under the windshield was terribly rotten so bad that the vent ducts had fallen out. Repairing this damage would take more time and work than what I spent to find a donor dash.



The donor came from the '59 coupe where I got the brakes and looked to be in pretty good shape. I cleaned it up and found about 5 layers of paint, most of which peeled up easily. For the balance, I sprayed it up with aircraft paint remover and scraped it off. I then buffed it down to the shiny metal.

The old dash was split at the interior dash line and then along the seam where the dash meets the hood. I cut off the vertical material of the old dash at the hood seal and left the matching material on the donor. The tough parts was cutting the old dash front to back. After making a rough cut on both the donor dash and the original, the process involved making small incremental cuts and fitting the new to the old. Once I was close, I tacked the donor to the car at the interior dash line and then at the hood end. With a thin cutting wheel I cut the overlapping material leaving me with a 1/16" gap. This was a good gap distance to seal weld the donor to the car. It took time and patience but at the end of the night I think it looks pretty good. In all, about a 5 hour process.





All the photos can be found here.