Need help painting my Dashboard panels and door panels etc.

Im am COMPLETELY new at paint so any and all help would be much appreciated. I will be removing the "wood" colored panels and installing led's so i want to paint the panels while their off to a red color. HOW DO I DO THIS???

Buy mine ;) Oh wait..

I took the panels to a body shop and had them professionally done. I'd honestly recommend having them professionally done, as it will come out a tonnn better. I think I paid like $150 to $200

Phil wrote:

Buy mine ;) Oh wait..

Hah...hah...seriously not funny how old are we Philium?

Ugh great another 200 to spend but i think your right that i should... only problem is here in ND with my luck its going to cost 400 just cuz they can... **** hate fargo....

check online their are a lot of good sites on how to's... i did all my panels, it took me a few times but once you get it down it's fun and pritty easy, you just need to pay attention to all the details and make sure your prep work is perfect.

the better the prep work with painting, the better the end result.

If it's DAILY DRIVEN I'd highly recomend getting it upholstered or wrapped in vinyl ect ...
Paint will get scuffed/damaged fairly easy in daily use ... Vinyl ect can be cleaned scrubbed and shined up if it gets hit/scuffed

bad venge wrote:

If it's DAILY DRIVEN I'd highly recomend getting it upholstered or wrapped in vinyl ect ... Paint will get scuffed/damaged fairly easy in daily use ... Vinyl ect can be cleaned scrubbed and shined up if it gets hit/scuffed

Never thought of that before... What ive wanted to do was get ALL the panels off the dash, doors etc. everywhere basically and paint them but ive never thought of vinyl... Got any pictures of a vinyl done

There's all kind on line ect ... You can use Vinyl fabric to get it to look like leather , or sticker type vinyl ... Hell I've even seen marble contact paper used looked pretty good when finished

I just finished my door panels and console lid and I'll tell ya wrapping vinyl isn't that easy. At times I pretty much wanted to scream. The dash is going to be the hardest part I believe as it has compound curves and such which causes issues with overlap and excess vinyl.

I tried all different types of adhesive through alot of trial and error the last few weeks. I'd read up as much as I could but when it came time to actually do it for some reason some of the recommended products wouldnt work for me. What I found to to be the best as long as you dont need to lift often and reposition is 3M 90 Spray Adhesive. I tried 80....and I think I used almost 1 can on a door panel and it still wouldnt stick. The 90 however worked alot better. Another product I used was DAP Weldwood High Temp Spray Adhesive that worked pretty good. Only thing was that it left bumps under the the vinyl due to it being the "Webbing" type spray. The 3M 80 was a true contact adhesive that doesnt have the webbing and is basically like the brush on type. However....it seems that type just soaks into the vinyl depending on what kind you have more so as the 3M 90 is partly contact/liquid and webbed glue.

I also had issues that if you applied too much adhesive no matter what time it seemed whatever solvent is in there had a tendancy to "melt" the vinyl and give it a wrinkly appearance. I tried 3M FastBond which is fairly expensive and water based. You can brush it on or spray it through a gun but that didnt hold crap. $36 for a quart! Only good I found it to be was it "sealed" the vinyl so then when I had to use the spray adhesive it didnt soak in as much. There's also another product found here that was recommended by a pro and they have great prices on other things as well like the vinyl.

www.yourautotrim.com

I'd also did raised flames on the panels using 1/4 sculpting foam and that was probably the easiest part of this whole deal! I used Ultraleather because it was the only company that had a color close to the flames that I have painted on the car. It's expensive though at $65 a yd at most places. I found a company that sold it to me for $48 ...still expensive given you can find fairly decent vinyls at stores like JoAnn. Now with that said it seems the Ultrealeather is a much thinner vinyl and easier to work with when it needs to be stretched around curves and such. When I needed more for my dash pad I didnt want to spend that much on it as it just needed to be black so I went to Joanne and found some for $16.99.

I know that's alot of info but just warning you its alot of work

I always use 3M super 777 adhesive

3m 77 isn't recommended for car interiors. It will not hold up to the high temps. Check out what they say about it on the hotrodders forum.

http://www.hotrodders.com/forum/

Also like the others said painted door panels tend to get scuffed and nicked. Mine was painted before I wrapped it and I can attest to the scuffing.

Been holding my trunk leather on since 98

Then use it. I was just trying to give advice.