painting the dashboard?
 

i know, and have seen a lot of the painting the interior threads. and i want to do this. what i was wondering, was if anyone has taken out the whole dash, and painted that too.

or any tips on how to do this with the most ease.

thanks!

Well, taking out the dash is usually a pain in the ass. The only vehicles I've pulled dashes from have been about 10 old skool Mazda B2200s, an 80s Celica, a bunch of 2nd gen RX7s and a couple 240SX's.

Usually the steering wheel needs to be taken off, and you need a steering wheel puller which you can rent at autozone for a few bucks. The battery needs to be disconnected and let the truck sit for about 15 minutes while the airbags discharge, otherwise if you're trying to take the dash out, you could actually deploy the airbags and that's not much fun.

After the wheel is off and the airbags are discharged, just start unscrewing everything basically. It's pretty time consuming, I would day would take atleast an hour to get your dash out if you've never done it before. I can take one out of a B2200 now in about 10 minutes.


As for painting, the dash is a rough texture. You'll want to get preferably a DA sander that they use for bodywork, but a regular orbital sander will work too. You will need to smooth the entire dash and get rid of the texture. After that very time consuming process is done, you can smooth it by hand, and then clean off all the dust, spray some adhesion promoter on it, and use a few coats of high build primer which will help fill in any imperfections. If you're going through this much trouble, you could also fiberglass the dash if you like.

But once it's smooth and primed, hit it with whatever colour you choose, clear coat it, let it dry for about a day and put it back together.

It'll easily take a weekend to do it. It's quite time consuming.

My B2200's interior

Attachment 157502

Gutted
Attachment 157503

Swapping from burgundy to grey
Attachment 157504

Done
Attachment 157505

wow. didnt think it would be that hard to do.

what are the Pro's and Cons of masking off everything i dont want painted, and then spraying it?

Leave the dash in!!!!!!!!


Just use some sand paper and rough the surface up then mask it off very good. go over it a few times to make sure you got all the glass and other stuff covered up

like he said beard painted his dash with it still in the truck.

^^id be afraid the paint mist would get all over ****.

Plastic drop stuff is all you need to cover the seats and floor

yeah. ill leave in the dash, and paint it with masking everywhere. if i ever get around to it.

ill for sure be doing my door panels and center console. and maybe my visors just for the hell of it.

well. ill do everything that i can get out. hahahaha

Gah, I would never paint the dash still in the vehicle. I bet it would smell like paint for days.

oh wow, this is very true. i dont know about the dash anymore.

im thinking of just doing everything i can get out.

any one think of someting that may slip my mind, that can be taken out a GEN 3 ranger? i know this is a long shot.

after painting my panels this weekend it still smells like rattle can in my truck lol

yeah, mine did too

would putting a box of baking soda inside over night kill the smell?

what could i do to not have it smell like it?

and how long did it smell for?

leave windows open is the best thing. and an air freshener like the little tree ones take the entire packaging off.,.,it will be strong but better than smelling paint all the time

I left mine in too its not hard to cover everything up i took my seats out when i did my whole cab


sadly it does i parked my truck for 3 days with the windows cracked. if you leave them up it smells bad but it goes away

I want to do this to my truck and get the inside to a flat black / semi glossy black. So all your need is to :

Sand
Adhesion Promoter
High Build Primer
Paint
Clear Coat ?

i thought all you would need to do is,

sand, mask off, paint, dry, beer.

sand
maskoff
adhesion promoter
primer
paint
cure
paint
cure
clear
beer
beer
jager shot
ha