So I am replacing the dash in my s10. The one in the truck is awful and is beyond repair. I picked up a far better one off craigslist for $25.00. The easy solution is one of those plastic dash caps but I think this one is save-able.
So my question is what is the current go to solution?
Dash is currently out of the truck.
Is that vinyl over padding, or pure plastic? (looks like vinyl)
You should be able to put new vinyl over that (you might need to clean up / fill the cracks a bit). It will require spray adhesive and definitely some heat gun work to make those curves.
seal and sand the cracks with some bondo. Then flock the whole dash. That's what we do on our rally car :)
True story, there was an old homeless guy back in the eighties that would hang out in the parking lot of the local shopping center. He would look into cars to see if the dash was cracked or the seat was ripped. He'd wait for the person to come out and then offer to fix it for a small fee or some beer. He talked Mom into it one time. He used fishing line to sew up the split in the seat. He did a decent looking job of it too, but he left a little bit of line sticking up and it would poke Mom in the ass every time she got in the car. She cussed him for a week before she found him again and made him fix it. I always had a good laugh every I'd see him.
Not sure what he did for dashes though.
You think that dash is cracked? That's adorable. 
^ 944 owner
The original one is way worse, that's the good dash.
Here is the one in the truck.
What did you say a cap worth?
Pete
A cap is roughly $120.00
There is a salt and superglue method you can find on YouTube but I’m not sure that Bondo isn’t better.
Many GM dashes are a full stamping that is just covered with padding and vinyl. I often wondered how they would look if you just stripped them down to steel and painted them.
The problem I would anticipate with bondo on a vinyl dash is that you are putting a rigid filler on a flexible substrate. I can't imagine it would last the first pothole.
What about epoxy with a filler like microfiber dust? Mix it up to the consistency of peanut butter and apply like bondo. It will at least have its own structure unlike bondo.
Dude! Flock that badboy!
I bought this kit: http://www.flockit.com/index.php/products/suede-tex/mini-flocker-kits.html
And it came out great. Waaaaaay better than the plastic cap i tried.
For the cracks I used a razor blade and sandpaper to smooth it out. and filled some rubber epoxy filler whose name escapes me at the moment, but you could probably find more on that in the yontube videos
https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=flocked+dashboard
I'd look at the flexible filler they use for bumper covers, followed by vinyl paint. Home Built by Jeff in Australia did this recently to the dash in his Datsun Z car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjetaNGgVgw Bondo will crack pretty quickly.
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