I have found the insulation under the dash to have harden over the years and now breaking, falling onto the sliders for the climate control. Blocking my side from getting to heat.
Question.. Has anyone gone deep enough into the dash to repair/replace this insulation?

 

 

 

cool! if I may ask, did you just stuff what you could from underneath having removed the bottom panels or did you actually take the whole dash apart to do that?

 

I've only removed the center bit - the dark gray plastic piece which holds the radio, climate controls, etc. It was pretty gnarly in there... IMO the way it's held in is not well designed, makes getting it apart without breaking something near-on impossible. I have the same issue with the sliders for climate control, but until you said the thing about the insulation, I didn't know what was causing the issue. My center dial doesn't turn all the way over to defrost, and even so, my defrost is on all the time. Not so bad in the winter, hella-annoying in the summer. Just figured something with the push-cables was boogered up. Oh well, I don't intend to ever go back in there unless absolutely necessary, I barely got it all to stick back together...

 

 

 

yea, for over a year I thought the broke left screw mount behind the climate control was the cause for my drivers side not going to heat. I thought it was hitting something due to not having that mount, and may have been b4 the insulation fell down. I had a wire that I could pull on to get the unit past that tight fit and that was working for a while. Then I guess the insulation fell down and spoiled that arrangement. Time to get it right!
Thank GOD for epoxy fillers!

 

'nuf said - I think I will do the "cram it up there with duct tape" procedure.

 

I've taken the entire dash cover off. The thing I didn't remove was the steel support and the AC evaporator and heater core. It is significant work to remove it all. I'm glad it's done. The main reasons I removed it was to recoat it with SEM (to repair UV damage on the Bahama Beige dash cover, passenger airbag cover, glovebox and the panel under the wheel), and the second reason was to underlay the dash with foam and repair all the cracked plastic to stop rattles. I underlaid it all with 1/8 neoprene foam, replaced all the weatherstripping on the ducts with high-quality weatherstrip foam (the stuff that's $20/roll at Home Depot) and repaired or replaced anything that was broken. The dash itself is built on an ABS form that can be melted with acetone and reflowed/filled with ABS cement. It's overlaid by polyurethane foam and vinyl. I cleaned the vinyl with ammonia and used an adhesion promoter before the SEM. I reinforced some areas of different components with plastic-specified two-part epoxy, and some components like the dash center I replaced with an unbroken one off a parts car (via ebay). While I was in there, I reorganized the wiring harness, lubed all the vent/damper controls, and cleaned it all out. I work very slowly, but I would say it took me about 40 hours work. I've done a lot of work like this on the whole interior, the door panels, the rear A/C, headliner, the seats. The only thing that isn't totally sound at this point is the center console. The ones I see off parts cars are all broken. Even the skateboard is hard to find a perfect replacement for. At this point, my console is not worse than the replacements I've seen available. I'll live with it until a better option comes along.