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Tue Mar 24, 2009 1:44 pm

Hi all
Can anyone point me in the right direction to anyone that does custom dashboards for type2 bus ive been searching the web for a while now and all i can find is custom dashboards for type 1 bugs i have a 1974 bay Devon conversion that im in the process of fully restoring.

Thanks

Tom

Tue Mar 24, 2009 1:52 pm

I don't think I've seen a custom dash for a bay. Not saying they are not out there, but I just haven't seen one before.

Tue Mar 24, 2009 5:47 pm

I dont know if this qualifies as custom to you, but here is mine that I took the padding off and painted the metal. It came out nice in my opinion

Tue Mar 24, 2009 8:11 pm

yeah, thats the route I am gonna go too. going to replace the center section as well, as mine snapped around the heater levers, and I want to ditch the fuel cluster for a temp guage and the spedo for a giant porsche tach and the right hole for a clock or somethin.

sorry mate, you are gonna have to build your own.

Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:22 pm

Magnus, that looks rather cool. How hard was it to get the padding off, and were you able to do it in such a fashion that if you wanted to go back to padded you could?

Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:16 pm

I too think that looks really nice, and would like to know how hard it was to do....

Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:19 pm

i think there was a write up on this somewhere i know i've seen it before, i'm not gonna search as me doing this right now doesn't make sense but it is pretty rad and on my to do one day list ;-)

Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:27 pm

magnus0328 wrote:

I'm doing the same thing to mine but I'm going to do a couple custom things to it also. :D

Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:40 pm

i dig the spot for the cig lighter, it would be rad if i didn't have gauges and such

Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:41 pm

It was rather easy actually. All I did was tear off the plastic / leather looking material until the actual foam was exposed. I then got a little of gas and poured it on the foam so that it would help dissolve it. It sat in the yard for a few hours and got very soft. I then got my angle grinder with wire wheel on it and just went down to the metal on the dash. It only took about 45 minutes or so. I then painted with Rustoleum and it came out great. On teh bottom right of the dash are factory holes for more knobs etc. I just plugged them with hole plugs and called it a day...

Wed Mar 25, 2009 2:19 pm

what was the down time on your bus for this? mine is a happy daily driver right now just wondering if i'd have to decommission it for a while to do this, just thinking about all the wires and crap, or is it just the speedo panel and vent knobs and stereo if you have one?

Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:09 pm

theizzardking wrote: what was the down time on your bus for this? mine is a happy daily driver right now just wondering if i'd have to decommission it for a while to do this, just thinking about all the wires and crap, or is it just the speedo panel and vent knobs and stereo if you have one?

If you can get your knobs off your switches you don't have to unwire anything. I bet you could get it done with a full days works.

Wed Mar 25, 2009 4:13 pm

I think that red dash looks cool as he!! I didn't know you could do that... Time to rethink my interior on the westy...

Wed Mar 25, 2009 4:52 pm

The Bay's in Europe all had metal dash's until the end of production in '79.

theizzardking,

I already had my dash out when I decided to do this. gmag69 is right though. All you have to do is onbolt the knobs and slide the gauge cluster through the hole and all is still connected.

I actually took my dash out after this pic and decided to change the color of the bus. Here is a recent pic of the dash (now light blue) without anything attached to it and out of the vehicle. It shows how easy it is to do the metal. There was already a stock small hole where I decided to put the cigarette lighter. I just made the hole a little bigger and put in a VW lighter. Very easy to do.

Here are other pics:

1.)

2.)

3.)

4.)

5.) Before:

6.)

7.)

As far as the top of the dash, I also took it down to the metal and used black felt to wrap around on the dash pad. It also came out nice IMO.

Wed Mar 25, 2009 4:57 pm

That looks really good. If now you just made the glove box door look as good as that steering wheel, it would be perfect!

What did you do to make the steering wheel shine like it is?

Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:01 pm

I actually took the steering wheel off, filled any cracks with body filler and painted it with appliance spray paint from Home Depot. It is made by Rustoleum and it is super-hard when dried. It is also moisture resistant and can be wiped down with a wet rag if needed with no problems.

As far as the glove box goes, I used a tac cloth after the pic was taken and wiped it down. It came out mint and looks brand new. It came out as nice as the cluster to the left

Thu Mar 26, 2009 2:58 am

Hello,
Are those holes for a speaker set?

You got a really nice collor combo.

This is ours covered not painted.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=244852&highlight=

Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:15 am

I dont think they are for speakers. I was going to use them for speakers though. I have no idea what the purpose is for them, but other people that went down to the metal filled them in with either body filler or welding. I like the way they look and if you look at the pics of my red dash, I put a black piece of rubber behind the grills and it had a nice contrast...

Topaz,

how did you cover it like that?

Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:52 am

Ours does have them.
They look really nice,also the acoustic sound will be better than setting the speakers at the doors or lower.
Nice thought.

As for our setup, we had to take everything apart ,then we drilled some holes for further switches and then covered the main unit with leather.
Glue was the technic.

The only thing that we have to do is take a small amount of leather and install the switch.

Thu Mar 26, 2009 9:32 am

magnus0328 wrote: I dont think they are for speakers. I was going to use them for speakers though. I have no idea what the purpose is for them, but other people that went down to the metal filled them in with either body filler or welding. I like the way they look and if you look at the pics of my red dash, I put a black piece of rubber behind the grills and it had a nice contrast...

That is what I'm going to do with mine. I thought that'd be pretty cool. 8)