Originally Posted by nathanb

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.