More Interior

After the carpet was installed, it really showed how awful the headlining was looking. Initially I didn't think it was too bad, but I gave it a thorough scrub and it was clearly evident that it had significant sun damage. Some of the vinyl had even cracked and come apart on the passenger A pillar. I glued in a patch of vinyl to cover the cracks and then sprayed the A pillar with dull-white vinyl spray. It suddenly looked a million times better and I knew I had to do the whole thing.

Being mid-Winter it was risky, but we were having a sunny day so I bit the bullet and careful masked the whole interior and then gave it many light coats, using two full cans in the end. There was two runs which I managed to spot early enough to clean up and recover with paint. I was pretty happy with the result, vinyl spray can really be hit and miss, but this turned out awesome. To the casual observer they wouldn't be able to notice.

The crashpad in these things are notorious for self-destructing from the Aussie summers. I don;t think I've ever seen a non-restored one in one piece. This one had a huge crack right through the middle about an inch wide where you could see the metal below. It had curled and peeled and was a write off. I have no idea how they repair them. I had started cutting off the worst bits and was going to bog it until I read online about a guy making a new one out of foam and vinyl. They are dead straight with no contours or many curves so I thought I should give it a crack. It was pretty easy actually, make a template from newspaper, cut foam to suit, test, then glue on vinyl, then fit. Although the corners that fold down into the sides of the dash don't quite look right, the rest looks very neat.