Cracking dash

I just noticed that on the front right corner of my dash, it is starting to crack. Right on the corner. Anyone know what I can do to stop this, and keep it looking nice?

There is a business here called Dr. Vinyl that repairs seats and scratches on vinyl, I would check the yellow pages and also call a dealership and see who they use. This guy I'm talking about travels to all the dealerships in the metro doing repair jobs like this to the cars on their lots. You need to get it taken care of now before it get's out of hand. Then keep it treated so it will stay soft, and if you want to go a step further, get a window shade to put in it when it's parked.

Okay cragmor, I registered today just to see if I could add any useful comments to your interior problem. I really needed a good excuse to register - but regalgs.org has been kind of dead lately... so here goes! I would have to say the easiest way would be to get your dash taken care of by a vinyl specialist, but if you are a do-it-yourselfer such as I am, you should be able to fix it no problem, BEFORE it gets worse!!!

I bought my Rivi with a lot of problems, one being two medium-sized, unsightly cracks right over the radio. For some reason I bet my car had engine troubles in it's life and someone liked pounding on the dash, but that's just speculation. The first thing I went out and did was buy one of those vinyl repair kits from AutoZone, and proceeded to read the directions. Basically, they give you super glue to stabilize the crack, and a bunch of different colored capsules of colored rubber junk to spread over the glue. You can then apply these "grain paper" samples over the rubber substance, and heat it up from the other side with this cheezy round metal applicator to cure the rubber, and give your dash the same texture it once had, but over the repair. I felt confident that I could mix my own colors properly for my dark graphite dash, but overall I felt like this product was a disaster so I pitched it.

I went out and got my trusty set of 5-min. epoxy tubes from the garage, and after thoroughly cleaning the cracked area of the dash with rubbing alcohol, I began to stabilize the crack. Overall, it took about 2-4 applications of epoxy to get the cracks completely stabilized. Luckily, my dash had not peeled up or deformed much around the cracks, so stabilizing the existing crack was a relatively simple process of filling in what was the ~1/16" gap left by the crack. In between coats of glue, I carefully scraped off any excess glue with an Exacto blade. On the last coat of glue, I made sure to roughen up the texture to make sure the glue joint matched the texture of the surrounding dash area. This is quite a detailed process - my applicators of choice for the epoxy were toothpicks and a hypodermic needle - think small!

My next step was to go to the local paint dealer and pick up a can of SEM leather and vinyl paint. I chose not spray the dash in the touch up areas, but rather apply the paint by hand with a touch up brush. Once the paint dried, the repairs came out seamless. A little ArmorAll to re-moisturize the area from the rubbing alcohol, and viola! New dash!!! I cannot tell where my repairs are to this day without close inspection, and I'm quite picky about cosmetics. Sorry I don't have any photos - I always forget that part!!! Check out the SEM lineup to see if they have something similar for a topcoat for your interior: http://www.sem.ws/catalog.php

Good Luck with your repairs!

Thanks for the info, Nicholas. Very good to know!