This weekend

[Aussie Ford]

I hope to change out my warped dash for my repaired one with freshly painted accessories / bezels. I did my plastic stuff in storm gray Dupla Color van & truck paint. I think it compliments the stone gray interior of my 99. Well that is my thought for now. Pics will follow as progress is made and since I'll have the wiring harness out as well I plan on the fog light mod too, along with a few extra wires for future. I got an extra front part for the console and add 4 more power ports making a total of five in it. I changed them all to the old style with the lighted green ring around them. WE shall see if I have gone completely over the edge or what !!! :laugh: :laugh:

Regards,
AF

[Woogieman]

I can't wait to see the pictures. Don't forget to include shots of the "old" so we have something to compare to. Good luck!

-Aaron

[Aussie Ford]

Ok so almost everything went well. my added power ports didn't work since I just forgot to factor in one little item. The fact that when they changed the location of the air bag monitor they also moved the front part of the console forward to accommodate the cup holders :blackeye: Well I am still working on that one and will come up with a solution to add at least a couple of power ports ;)

Now about the dash. Well at the JY it took me 1 1/4 hrs to pull it. At home where I had to plan on reusing stuff and being careful, and cleaning up spots and stuff it took about 2 1/2 hrs. BTW those little screws in the inside rocker trim are a PIA to get out. I had to use a dental pick along side them with some up pressure, to coax them out while I turned the plastic screw.

I was going to leave the seats in, but when I removed the console I saw several wires turn down at the ABM and head into the carpet. Well I got this bright idea that they must have something to do with the power seat and the seat belt indicator so I removed the drivers seat and then started to remove the wiring harness at the center hump. Those wires went only a couple of inches under the carpet and are for connection to the ATX slector :o Damm if I just hadn't slept since I removed that dash :laugh: The rest of the removal went as planned.

Here are some pics of the old dash note how the other owner used paper spring clamps to minimize the rise of the rise if the warp.
1405

Here you can see how loose the top really is.
1406

There is more to the warp issue than the top. People just see that more but the sides come loose too.
1407
1411

Even the center area if it weren't for the HVAC/ Radio bezel the thing would be a real mess everywhere.
1409

There just is no adhesion to the pad material. In most places the glue was still on the plastic as can be seen by the mottled areas, in others I wonder if there was any glue at all since the backing was as clean as can be. The back of the pad in all locations was smooth and slick. What were they thinking?

[Aussie Ford]

So then comes the install after transfering the wiring harness to the rebuilt dash pad. One thing I should mention is the replacement dash that I got while it had most of the dash warp kit on it there was nothing done to re glue the loose pieces in place.

I did not redo the parts that were done, by that I mean I did not remove the small pop rivets. I did take my heat gun and relaxed then clamped the loose parts back into place. After waiting several hours I applied some spray glue for plastic and then reclamped the parts in place. By basically reforming them I think there is a larger chance they will stay put. That is why I chose not to use the metal vent cover. I have it just in the event the front starts to rise any. It didn't seem to do much other than cover over the mess up front if the plastic replacement cover didn't work, and it is to be installed over that cover anyway. I did also add more U clamps to the inside of the vent opening lining both sides not just the rear as the kit says to. For now it looks OK. I tried to get some pics that show how I see the color of the plastic parts blens with the dash, but colors can be a bit tricky with the light. One other thing is when I was installing the headlight switch bezel seems there is a bit of difference between the 98 & 99 on the bottom side (I got all the plastic parts for the dash off this 98 since someone had broken them on the 99 the dash came from) A quick adjustment with some carefully applied tin snips and it fit ok. :laugh:

1412

1414

1415

1418

1417

One last advantage was I remembered to run the power for the radar detector up inside of the dash....... but I ALMOST forgot to do that, it was real close :crazy: At least it was an almost :laugh:

Comments welcome .........Hmmmmm what to do next ??????

Regards,
AF

[Woogieman]

It looks like it worked awesome! Those pictures were great.
I had the big metal piece installed on my vent & some screws were used above the speedo & on the edges in the glove box. I was never able to see the dash while it was out, but I've always felt that the glue would let the whole dash cover come off if it wasn't for all of the other parts holding it on. Your pictures & experience have totally proved that. Thanks for the pics & congrats on the great job you did.

-Aaron

[gooserex]

Your dash looked a mess!!! The final piece looks great though, sadly I just don't see myself having enough time to pull the entire dash, but while I'm here, how long did it all take? I pushed the dealer some more on my repair kit issues and after I suggest finding other kits at dealers and asking them to confirm their contents a kit was found in Edmonton that has the clips, so the dealership I got my kit from is getting the kit from Edmonton for me and they will ship the original kit back as defect. heh

cheers

[Aussie Ford]

Your dash looked a mess!!! The final piece looks great though, sadly I just don't see myself having enough time to pull the entire dash, but while I'm here, how long did it all take? I pushed the dealer some more on my repair kit issues and after I suggest finding other kits at dealers and asking them to confirm their contents a kit was found in Edmonton that has the clips, so the dealership I got my kit from is getting the kit from Edmonton for me and they will ship the original kit back as defect. heh
cheers

You still need to pull the dash out to install the kit. All together I spent about 6 hrs on my project, but that includes a couple 2 hrs just dinking around doing things like the fog light mod and cleaning the carpet, swapping the air bags so I would have the original one in place, and several other things that were unrelated if one was just going to fix the dash. They tell you to pull the dash part way out but you still need to do a lot of things to get to that point. It is all in the info attached, and would take about 4 hrs to do I'd guess.

The metal cover piece for example is black and even though I didn't install it I did paint it to match better, so if in the future there is a need it will look good. Then there is the about 12 - 14 hrs reshaping, clamping, and regluing I did, that if one was just doing the kit as instructed you wouldn't do. Of course doing all the extra stuff is why I went to the trouble of getting the extra dash and plastic parts to paint up. I'm one that thinks we need to be smarter and do things better than Detroit. :laugh:

FYI:
1422

Thanks for the comments :D:D