Has anyone used "Just Dashes" to recover a dash pad? If so, can you provide an opinion. Quality of work and match of material to stock.

Has anyone used anyone else?

I know this will be a unpopular reply, but I bought a recovered dash pad and knee pad from Automobile Atlanta. Both look great and the work was very well done. I didn't have any problem with purchase, shipping or anything else.

Unpopular?
Why?

Weird. I talked with at least three different people about recovering dash at the SF Bay Area Breakfast last weekend.

I don't know of anyone besides Just Dashs doing the work. AA is probably sending them to Just Dashs and reselling them.

I've seen Just Dashes' work on other classic makes & their workmanship was very good & the owners said their materials were a very close to exact match (on 50's-70's US makes' materials).

But I can't say how close their black vinyl will be to the 914's Porsche/VW OEM vinyl texture.

You might want to clip a small bit from the back of your dash where it's usually hidden behind stuff when mounted (assuming you have it out or access up there), & send it to them for a matching sample(s) to check.

Thanks Tom. I do have it out and will send them a piece.

Just dashes uses padding under the vinyl so it doesn't look or feel identical to stock but seems to be the best choice out there for now.

How much?

Hey Mark! It was nice meeting you at the 914 breakfast on Saturday! Funny
you were just telling me about Just Dashes and here it is on the board 2 days later!

Check this thread for Just Dashes.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...p;#entry2021949

Somebody said $600-700 for a 914 dash.

I paid much less than that for my dash, but it's been 8 or 9 years since I had it done.

Total cost for my entire interior was about $1,600 cash. That was the dash and knee pad, A and B pillars, passenger door rest and driver door rest and map compartment.

I think I paid just under $1100 for lower and upper dash. They also fixed the common sag over the instruments. About 6~8 weeks lead time cause of back orders. I think it's a 2 week process.

Here are some pictures of the more critical areas. The grain is not exact, so I'm glad I did both upper and lower dashes. As mentioned above, the dash seems to have a "puffier" look than stock.

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That's why I did everything at once so that it matched. I couldn't find NOS pieces and the cost of a NOS dash at that time was incredible. Not sure you could even find one now.

To my eye the more pronounced grain is what is most noticeable. It's very subjective, of course, but I prefer the smoother grain of the factory vinyl.

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Sure,the production tooling of the method Porsche used back then was state of the art.
The puffiness you refer to is the perception of the part's radii.
The tool used was chemically etched with acid to remove material from the mold surface.
Likely a silkscreen technique rather than a photographic method.
Anyone with automotive trim experience would know that.
It is a very nice result and the ashtray delete option is convenient.
Again,labour intensive.

Or the puffiness is from the 1/8" layer of foam they(just dashes) use to cover the dash under the vinyl. Not stock, so it looks different. The rest I have no idea what you're talking about.

How could you?
It's technical.

Wow. Nice response.

It's just a dashboard, not an Atlas V rocket.

technical?

You obviously don't understand. Veekry is our new resident answer guy -- we just need to work on making those answers comprehendible.

I beg to differ. Everybody knows that vinyl is one of the alkenyl functional groups. Thus, as a result, applying negative pressure to the vinylic(which it is often referred to on a carbon skeleton due to the positions of sp2-hybridized carbons) will cause a raised-grain that is commonly mistaken for the puffiness that you mention.

Or, like mepstein said, it could be because of the padding.

Moldmaking,tool+die+die-cast,light to heavy for decades.
I'm pretty sure there are some members here able to comprehend manufacturing methods.
"How to drill a hole",I've witnessed 20yr vets fuck a 40K block of 4340 putting a hole in the wrong place.
The bill for recovery was 110K.So yeah,there is always a screwup somewhere.You can hear the sound of them.
no yoo poo poo.As a child.Immature.

These are 2 different techniques. Porsche made the dashes by forming the vinyl into the mold, then inserting a substructure into the top of the mold, closing it and injecting high density foam into the cavity.

Ask me how I know

Just Dashes take the core, grinds down the vinyl, applies a thermally activated glue and forms the vinyl over a thin pad to take up imperfections. Yes, it will have some give unlike the OEM, and as you stretch the vinyl the pattern will elongate. But short of a large custom tool it's a good down and dirty way to reuse the core, you just have to play with the sag in the inst cluster to to make it not sag. Very labor intensive, inexpensive to set up (relatively so).

Exactomundo.
The problem evident is the lack of uv resistance in the old formula vinyl,can't hack the solar radiation.
Even the expanded foam underlay turns to dust.
The inside of the vinyl was given an adhesive coating before the injection cycle so the foam would adhere to the vinyl.
Funny thing,the tool would be much less expensive to produce today in comparison to then,
They used Deckel pantographs to do the cavity.'67-68 you see.
Hydraulic copy mills were just being introduced then.
It was '72 when we got our first VDF NC tape lathe,optical toolsetting.
60 hp bulldozer,I loved that machine.

No prob, actually sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

But I see little need for - or value in - being a condescending c**k.