Sean,nice work,looks brilliant!

First thing is to strip the fascia of its original paint and paint that has been added over the years.
Tidy up all holes and cut pieces from other fascias to fill in the holes.
repair any cracks and missing mounting lugs.
Weld in the patch panels.
Repaint in original suede black and do the silver border.





Here are the others I have done....

What paint are you using?? Really need to know so I can paint my fasia because I have not been having any luck with the VHT or K & H brands of vinyl paint in a can which use to be good and always gave me excellant results. When you fill the holes what medium are you using to bond the pieces together?? With fasias that I have repaired I have always used acetone thinners to fuse/melt the plastics together weather it be butting two pieces together or fitting a section into a hole and if I need any filling I file some plastic to collect the powder and mix a few drops of acetone with this to make a paste. This is strong and all works well but it is always good to hear other ideas and to experiment. Do you use a primer or some sort of high fill primer over your repairs to fill any small imperfections? Sorry about all the questions but this is something I have been plodding along with for years (cannot stand it when people drill holes for switches and fit aftermarket radios into what is a really good looking dash) and just working it out as I go along and have not really come across anybody else doing it except for the plastic repair mobs who charge a lot and don't really finish the job off well unless you want to pay for the extra time spent. Cheers

why charge $50 per hour??? surely you can do it for less?

sorry for asking then, just curious where you got that figure from as it becomes not that economically viable to do it if they owe $800 or more if they are rough and require so many hours to do. not knocking you at all, if thats what you want, thats great and your choice and your right to ask that, just asking why you want $50 per hour thats all as most shops with major overheads only change out at $70-80 per hour.
i would have thought that if you are interested in preserving whats left of these fascia and sandmans, and you are not relying on these for your main income that you'd do them at a lesser rate to help those that want to have one but just cant afford alot of cash.
believe it or not, i come in at a 1/3 of that price for some of the stuff i do and thats my main income and you are more than welcome to visit me to see what is done at the shop
sorry if i offended you. good luck with future dash fix ups

Edited by user Thursday, 28 April 2011 3:25:50 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Cheers Absinth for the info, I fully understand where you are coming from with time spent, that is why I try and do these sort of things myself because as mentioned to pay some one, especially someone running a business and get the results you really want it just takes so long plus doing it yourself also gives you some personal satisfaction at the end of the project. What is this paint you are talking about that you use, Brand, acrylic, enamel, dye ???? and where do you get it? I have always been going to give the plastic welding ago have you ever tried the acetone as this tip was passed on to me by a guy that worked at a plastic weld shop. Cheers

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr Sir
What is this paint you are talking about that you use, Brand, acrylic, enamel, dye ???? and where do you get it?

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Holden dash fascia's were not a bare plastic finish, they were all painted black with GMH Suede black.... all Holden interior paints are Dulon Acrylic laquer. Consoles, lower dash panels, glovebox etc were painted with medium gloss.


Here is a HG one I have just put back together after restoring the fascia a while ago.

Edited by user Monday, 2 May 2011 8:41:15 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I thought that one was a bit too much also for what it is. However a perfect uncut portland grey HJ fascia would sell for that on it's own, I know of one that had the column auto factory cut out that sold for $900. Good HJ GTS fascia's are hard to come by, I only have two and the one above cost me over $200 with a broken mounting lug and ten holes in it including a hacked out radio hole.

Good restorable fascia's are getting hard to get also, out of the 17 GTS fascia's I have only 7 are in restorable condition and 4 of those will have slight imperfections. Holes and cracks in the textured area's can't be repaired well enough to be completely unseen and a lot of fascia's have cracks,holes or screw holes in these area's. I cut these up for repair pieces for the better ones. Finding donor Kingswood fascia's with uncut radio holes for reasonable money is getting harder also.

Broken fascia cut up for repair pieces....




Fascia's I have.... only 7 good enough to spend the time restoring.

$940 holy crikey !!

Hey Absinth

Is the new ignition plastic a Rare's piece??

What do you use to polish the plastic lenses??

Cheers

Jeremy