What color should I dye my dashpad?

[swervin ervin]

Jeff,

I sure did. It worked good. May not be made for it, but it worked great for me. Matches the vinyl stuff perfectly.

[Jonboy]

DuPont makes a good plastic prep as well. I dyed the interior pieces of my El Camino about 10 years ago, and it still looked like new the last time I saw it. I had smoe NOS interior trim mixed in when I did it, but the cleaning steps are similar.

I used a grey scotchbrite pad (the finest one available) in all of these steps. I know you have already done yours, but this might help someone out.

1. Clean all parts with soap and warm water.

2.clean parts with lacquer thinner. This is just to make sure everything is off, before the final cleaning. Especially important on used parts, since most of these parts have some kind of texture in them. Don't worry about the residue left over when the parts are drying.

3. wipe all parts down with 3812 slow dry enamel thinner. This seems to work a little better than wax and grease remover. make sure to dry them as well.

4. Wipe down with Dupont's plastic prep. This will help keep down any static.

5. spray parts with adhesion promoter. Make sure you use some kind of respiration equipment, as this is pretty nasty stuff.

6. Color the parts.

I used Dupont interior paint, through a spray gun. You will probably want to use semi-gloss, that seems to be the closest to the OEM finish, in my experience. Following this, your interior dye should last the life of the vehicle.

[Gregsmx]

Jeff, I hope you mind your thread getting hi-jacked a little?

Jonboy, that's a great description of the prep and paint for the interior parts. One question, what type/brand of adhesion promoter should be used?

I've pranked around with SEM products (Cleaner/prep/spray (which is not actual dye, but just labled 'flexible coating')) but the results are the color will scrape away with your fingernail even after weeks of drying time. It doesn't appear the color 'empregnated' the plastic. Any tips or reasons this could be happening?
Thanks, Greg.

[Jonboy]

Greg, I used DuPont's adhesion promoter, and sprayed it through my paint gun. I used the same spray dye in the El Camino. I would imagine SEM has some of the adhesion promoter also. If you are dying parts that aren't in a high traffic area, that may not be of the utmost importance. Using the steps above, the dye looked great after 80K miles. I used SEM spray dye on the plastic in the yellow truck in the pictures Jeff put up, and I think we used "bulldog" adhesion promoter from O'Reilly's. It comes in an aerosol can.

[N2TRUX]

Jeff this guy took it a bit farther and painted the lower dash tan too. See what you think.....

[Captkaos]

I like it that way Ken, but I wasn't going to suggest it since Jeff JUST got him out of the paint shop and is waiting on other stuff...

[Jonboy]

That is sort of what I had in mind for the Blazer, painting the lower dash like that.

[ponjohn]

Bigblock73- what seats are those out of you show above?