Whilst the engine was being built over the winter of 2010/11, I decided I was going to have a go at making another dashboard. This time it was going to be made from a lighter coloured wood (Birds Eye Maple), as I was bored of the darker one now.
I removed the old one and made a template up from cardboard using the old dash. This was then used to cut out the shape onto a 12mm piece of MDF. As before, I dampened the wood using wet cloths covering the ends for a couple of hours and then, using wood jammed against the dash, I put it in place so it would take up the curve of the cockpit. After a couple of days it had dried so I finished cutting the shape to get it to fit nicely.
This time I added a panel to either side where it reaches down to the centre tunnel to hide the wiring from view. The same as the Dax dash. I then cut the dials out, filled in any rough bits and joins using wood filler.
As I'd made the tops of the door trims from wood last time, I simply removed the old veneer and prepaired these with some sand paper ready for the new veneer.
I also cut a thin sheet of plywood up to cover the lower part of the door opening. The carpet had never looked right there, however hard I tried, so I decided to make that out of wood too and see what it came out like.
The veneer came from http://www.nantwichveneers.com/ these were increadably helpful, they sent me several samples so I could chose which colour would suit it best.
The length of the dash means glueing the veneer on was very tricky, in fact it took me 4 attempts to get it right. Each time I had to buy some more veneer, as its impossible to get it off whole once its stuck.
The idea is to clamp the veneer from the middle and work your way to the outer edges, but this isn't easy. It needs to be wrapped tightly in plastic (bags etc) to keep tension on it and to keep the front surface from getting glue on it.
After a lot of frustration I finally managed to get it stuck down flat. A little trick is to heat any bubbles up with a hair drier and slowly smooth them out, keeping the veneer damp also helps to stop it cracking.
Over the Summer, the veneer cracked down the middle. I was gutted, but decided to cover it with a panel of some form. I then came up with the idea to make a leather insert to cover the crack. To do this I simply made up the shape from a thin piece of hardboard and stuck some foam to it then wrapped it in the leather, glueing it on the back.
I re-fitted the old dials to start with, but decided to replace I would replace these with the Smiths Cobra range of dials that are now available, including the anti-clockwise moving speedo gauge. I replaced the carpet with a black gell backed version that came up on EBay very cheap and I replaced the steering wheel with a Leather version, the wooden one looked good but I just never liked the feel of it.
