Well, it is time to get rid of the last of the original paint! I blew the dust off my sandblaster, filled it with 60 grit silica sand and set up a little blasting area outside the front of the shop using a good sized plastic tarp and the four benches that I had bought to stand on when I was painting the roof. As it turns out those benches have been a great investment, I use them all the time around the shop.

The blaster made quick work of the old paint on the dash. After blasting I washed it well with soap and water and then went over the whole surface with wax & grease remover. After letting it dry in the sun, I gave it two wet coats of epoxy primer. I had intended on using grey, but I didn’t have enough. So black it is, actually that worked really well since it makes a great indicator when sanding.

Once the epoxy had cured, I coated the A/C outlet with a heavy layer of Evercoat short strand filler which I then shaped with my orbital sander using 60 grit. My main goal here was to provide some added strength to the outlet mount which was formed using some fairly light sheet metal, and to smooth out the surface while fine tuning the edges to where the fit snugly to the contour of the dashboard. Once I was happy with the final fit of the A/C outlet mount, I gave the dash board, glove box door and the A/C outlet four coats of PPG K38 High Build primer surfacer.

After the K38 had cured, I guide coated everything with 3M Dry Guide Coat and then blocked it out with some 180 grit. The guide coat showed that I had some low spots that needed to be filled before going on, so out came the good old Easysand. After several iterations of fill, guide coat, sand I got everything to an acceptable level of smoothness. Then I noticed that I had not drilled the mounting holes for the two push buttons needed to program the my Dakota Digital Gauges and the push button needed to tell the computer to disengage the overdrive.

Refinishing the Dashboard

All that was left was to guide coat and wet sand with 220 and 400 grit. I decided to skip the 600 grit step since after the 400 step I had a really nice finish and frankly this dash is a real bitch to sand, lots of compound surfaces and tight corners, which take forever to work through. At this point I am planning on using more of a flow coat when I spray the color coats so that I can skip the final cut and buff as well.