V/S 70 dashboard - And why did they do that??

[scot850]

Now having played with these cars for many years, I still find things which just make me shake my head and wonder what the heck was the design engineer taking, or did he do part of the job on Friday and the other part on Monday after a stag night weekend??

While working on the dashboard's seemingly endless repairs, I had taken the original destroyed dash and disassembled it into its constituent parts out of interest and easier to dump the broken smaller sections in the garbage.

One of the repairs was fixing the lower drivers' side dash mount (LH side in this case). For some reason it was cracked and broken whereas the RH one was totally fine. It was similar on both dashboards. What I found just made me shake my head!!

The dashboard has 2 triangular stiffeners, one at each end. The lower end of this has a hole in the frame for the lower mounting screw. What I found was the RH side one is elongates so the mounting pad for the door trim surround is bolted through the bottom of the frame which keeps the whole RHS firm and the plastic is protected.

On the LHS, the bracket stops at the mounting screw and does not go further. Why in the heck would you do something entirely stupid like that. It is almost as stupid as the flimsy slots for the lower under tray on the LHS under the steering column, but there are mounting bolts on the other side and supports.

I have spent now about 8 hours repairing all the broken parts, excluding the actual main mounts!!

End brackets side by side

PXL_20230519_222450763.jpg (544.42 KiB) Viewed 301 times

You can see above they are different lengths. Don't be fooled that the door trim surround mount is in the hole for the lower screw in the shorter one so I don't lose it! You can see better here.

Bracket s with LHS trim mount removed

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LHS lower mount

PXL_20230519_222623461.jpg (200.01 KiB) Viewed 301 times

You can see how the frame stops just below the lower screw mount and the trim clip is bolted only to the plastic below it.

RHS lower mount

PXL_20230519_222705006.jpg (223.79 KiB) Viewed 301 times

You can see here where the RHS mount continues below the trim mount.

So let me think about this. The LHS (in a LHD car) takes more knocks then the RHS as the driver gets in and out more often than a passenger typically does, so lets make that side flimsy for no logical reason??

Whyyyyyy!!!

Neil.

[FireFox31]

Thanks for the clear information. During dashboard work, how many of the repairs are hidden on the undersides of hard plastic and how many are on visible, vinyl and foam covered plastic like what you pictured above?

The hidden hard plastic repairs seem easy since epoxy has hard material to grab on to and you don't care how it looks. But having to repair breaks underneath the visible vinyl/foam seems vastly more difficult. I was excited to remove my dashboards and repair them until you made me realize I might have to deal with vinyl/foam.

[scot850]

Actually, none of the repairs, even on my totally destroyed dash really affect the vinyl noticeably. The only ones that do at all are along the lower edge of the steering wheel cut-out lower edge and those will be hidden by the under tray as it overlaps those parts. I will document all the repairs as well as the metal reinforcing straps I added to hopefully help reduce the likely return of any of the issues in the foreseeable future (I hope!).

Cleaning the surfaces with cotton buds and alcohol (I used acetone) in the areas you are going to glue helps prep the surface, as does sanding the areas around it to allow overlap of the epoxy.

Neil.