DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

hot66 wrote:that dash looks superb .. so many in the past have said a cracked dash can't be restored , but that prives otherwise . Very cool

Thanks James .. many said it should go in the bin,,,, but like I said before ,,this one fits so well

I wouldn't be put off trying this yourselves , you've only a few hours and a bit of vinyl to lose if it all goes wrong

jtparr wrote:Like the door top rails...they seem to have stretched nicely around the difficult end profiles....did you glue the vinyl along the long edges and then stretch across the end faces at the end....did you use much heat to get the vinyl to stretch and even to shrink...?

Hi Jonathan ,

I just took my time ,but stretched the vinyl end to end first with a little glue just in case I had to remove it to reposition later .. I found this way worked ok as I had extra vinyl to get rid of near the ends due to stretching but had the whole length both sides of the rail to try and lose it

I didn't use any heat ,,just a little foul language but that didn't really help much at all

Happy to talk any aspect of this through with you or any other ddk'ers ,.... If I can do it I suspect you lot can too

Thanks Matthew

Looks a good job on the dash. I did mine also. Not too difficult but takes time especially at each end of the front of the dash where there are sharp compound curves. I used PU to hide the join like you. To get the PU matt I found that allowing it to set a while and then gently go over it with a damp finger removes the shine.

Good tip Matthew...I guess to do the long sections first is tempting but I can see how having a greater area to loose the excess makes eminent sense..

jtparr wrote:Good tip Matthew...I guess to do the long sections first is tempting but I can see how having a greater area to loose the excess makes eminent sense..

Yes it's tempting to do that , but I found that having the sides loose also helped when trying to get the ends stretched over

If you do the sides first you'd have to stretch the vinyl harder in one direction

Nice job on the dash. That’s on my Todo list as well

Nicely done Matthew, thanks for sharing.
Cheers, Richard.

sladey wrote:Nice job on the dash. That’s on my Todo list as well

That'll be easy for a man with your skills Sladey !

Dunno about that - but splitting into two pieces makes it look achievable - really nice work

Great work on the dash - great car all round!

Decided I needed to get the headliner in so I could get my dash fixed in and tbh I've been putting this off as I realise it's not an easy job

I put my headliner bows in after measuring them but they all appeared to be too long ,,,not by much but still too long so they didn't really sit straight and wobbled about just like my Mrs after a bottle of red

All the threads I could find on this seemed to suggest it would all come right with a little stretch and tug etc so a couple of nights ago I hung the fabric in the car ,held with the only clips I had to hand ..I was hoping with the heatwave we just had ( only kidding) that the creases might come out on their own

[url=https://flic.kr/p

Anyway the following morning I went in the garage to find that the pixies hadn't tidied up for me as hoped and neither had my wrinkles disappeared !

I did have a delivery from postie though ,,a box of 50 bulldog clips so I decided to get it stuck in ..

No matter how I stretched the fabric there seemed to always be an area where it looked out of shape and if I tugged to remove that gremlin it just surfaced somewhere else ... I was getting p*88ed off

Could it be the fabric sewn the wrong shape ? Or maybe the bows ? ,,

Anyway I took the lot out ,, put the fabric over the ironing board and gently ironed it ,,,,,,couldn't do a shirt ,,but a dab hand with anything motor related !

Then I turned attention to the bows and gently altered the ends with a big f*** off hammer and removed about 5mm each end then shaped them to follow the inside of my roof with a nice tight fit against my sound deadening pad ...perfect

Sorry there's a lack of "during" pics but I had glue all over my hand for most of the day ,,,furry hands like an ape

Here she is ,,messy garage

Nice......

Yep very nice