what do i have to do to my dash before i glass it.

yeah i want to know if i can just use resin also or do you have to have the mat ?? i just filled my holes primed the fuck out of it and painted it looked great for three days but now its craking under the paint so i am gonna sand it back down and maybe just resin the thing ????????

you really should use mat on it (you could use cloth too). There is no strength in resin so when the dash would expand or contract under the sun it would crack apart. I recoment to use at least one layer of ripped up 3/4oz matt. Shaving the holes.. you can use anything, it isnt supporting weight or adding strength just giving a shape to fiberglass you are laying down. Great stuff foam is the stuff i use all the time because its easy to work with. If you dont feel like shaving it down with a knife and have your dash out just put masking tape on the front of the dash so its flat with the surface you want and spray the foam from the back.

why should you use matt over cloth? cloth is nothing but rovings put together and there is only a limited number of matrices (crossing of fibers) because its in a pattern. If you try to break the part across those lines its like a fault line in the earth. Since matt is just a bunch of fibers all smashed together you get alot more matrices and they arent going in any one direction.

i think i answered your questions and gave more info than you bargained for... buti hope it helps.

Good luck

thanks for the replies. the holes and things i will use matt on but the rest of it is soft. so i am wondering if i have to put matt and resin on the whole thing. it would save alot of fill work to not have to fill the entire thing. and i don't think just priming it would work because it would still be soft and prone to cracking. if just resin does not work is there something esle i can put on it to harden it up but not make for so much body work? i was thinking of using norton or 3m structural adhesive, the stuff spreads easy, levels out pretty nice and sands decent but i worry about it sticking.

Ok if the dash is a hard material that isn't going to flex then all you have to do is sand it down put some spray mud on it and then do all the nessacary body work stuff that needs to be done. The only reason you have to use fiberglass is to make something hard. That is the purpose or to form something. So if its hard plasic just sand it and take the texture out. If it is the vinyl stuff that you can push down with your finger then you will have to harden it by using fiberglass. That is simple guide line to go by.

Edited: 6/7/2006 5:50:59 PM by onebulletleft

jacob is right, you can do it that way but i usually cover everything because sometimes the fiberglass cracks away from the stock plastic (there is no real fail safe way to do it) and then you can just glue it back down.

also, you can rip out all the soft stuff and fill that spot with foam, just like shaving the vents. Either way works