Dashboard/fascia update

So this plan is just in the vague, "I'm thinking of it" phase... My dashboard is a mess of warped or broken plastic (Singapore sun will do that), panel gaps, faded grey pigment, and goo... Lotus used glue to hold the switchgear in and it hasn't aged well.

A recent attempt to replace the stereo has finally shown me the way to take the whole fascia off. Since I need to do that anyway to install a new heater core and mount the gauge cluster properly, maybe it's time for a bit of upgrading.

Here's what it looks like now. Not my car but that doesn't matter:

My seats are charcoal and my instrument faces are blue (and I don't have a Momo wheel) but other than that it's the same. I have the same ugly panel gaps too, only worse. Here I've highlighted the section I'm thinking of removing and redoing:

Some other Elan owners have done this to good effect, replacing the original tired plastic fascia with a new one made from carbon fiber or whatever. I don't know if I want to get that high tech. Sheet metal, pressboard, fiberglass molded over wood??? I also don't know how easy it would be to move the HVAC controls (bottom right.) Some of the switches don't do anything and are just dummies.

So here's where I need some input - what should the thing look like? I want to keep the dominant colours black with orange accents, and I'd rather it look a bit more sophisticated than pure race car functionality. I'd like to draw inspiration from the great sports car dashboards of the '80s, whatever those are.

Post up some ideas or inspiration for me!

1. Remove dash
2. cover in plastic food wrap.
3. build cardboard surround
4. cover in 8 cans of great stuff High Expansion
5. use foam template to create 1 pcs Carbon/FG dash
6. replace crappy oem lights with all white LED
7. re-install using actual hardware in place of glue

could be done in a week if you have time

4cylndrfury wrote: 1. Remove dash 2. cover in plastic food wrap. 3. build cardboard surround 4. cover in 8 cans of great stuff High Expansion 5. use foam template to create 1 pcs Carbon/FG dash 6. replace crappy oem lights with all white LED 7. re-install using actual hardware in place of glue could be done in a week if you have time

Have you done that before? I'd like to see how the finished product would turn out.

sounds like a plan... are those gages to the left of the main cluster stock or aftermarket?

No, those are stock. That's the boost, oil pressure, and, uhh... other gauge.

Woody wrote:

4cylndrfury wrote: 1. Remove dash 2. cover in plastic food wrap. 3. build cardboard surround 4. cover in 8 cans of great stuff High Expansion 5. use foam template to create 1 pcs Carbon/FG dash 6. replace crappy oem lights with all white LED 7. re-install using actual hardware in place of glue could be done in a week if you have time

Have you done that before? I'd like to see how the finished product would turn out.

Ive never done a dash, but Ive been a part of a build of a remote control car body done this way...wish I had pics, but unfortunately did not take any. Its not quite as cut and dry as that, sometimes the foam pattern needs a bit of touching up - fast drying spackle (drywall patch) is a good candidate for touching up the pattern since it dries fast and is easy to work. You may want to do a trial run with fiberglass to see how it goes. To do a truly "pro job, youll need to make 2 separate foam patterns of both the front AND the back, and lay up all your cloth and resin and squeeze the extra resin out between the halves. But Id bet with a little ingenuity, less than $200 should be MORE than do-able for a small dash. if you really want to keep cost down, skip the carbon fiber, and just keep the fiberglass, and paint the final product.

Right, well I was just going to swap the stereo this afternoon, but one thing led to another, and...

^^ Eww...

This probably won't be as involved as fabbing up a full replacement fascia, but it's a good opportunity for me to clean up some of the nagging interior faults that have been bugging me forever. Like cleaning up the nasty rat's nest of hacked wiring from the PO, properly mounting the gauge cluster (it was just sitting in there resting on the odometer reset pin , and had been annoying me for literally two years), and making everything nice and tidy...

So, here's the to-do list:

• Get the car drivable as is. I at least need to put the headlight switch back in, and that means the instrument wiring harness should go back in, which means putting a quick release plug on the boost/voltage/oil pressure gauges because I don't feel like taking those off the fascia. I also want to rig a temporary mount for the bezel; since I got speed-cameraed at, like, 40 in a 30 km/h zone AGAIN :censored: I at least want the speedo back in there.

• Clean up the look of the fascia. Fix all the broken bits, try to get everything to line up better, remove all the GOO that's stuck everywhere, and maybe give it a nice rattle-canning of matte black paint.

^^ What the heck is with all this GOO anyway? It's on everything, it's sticky as all hell, and it really sucks to get on your hands, especially if you're taking pics with your shiny new camera. Apparently Lotus really used this E36 M3 to build the car originally. I usually don't question Lotus' design decisions, but geez, it's horrible. Assuming I can dissolve it away, I reckon I can find something better.

• Clean up the wiring. Get the driver's side and rear speakers working.

• If I get really into this I'm going to take off the whole dash pad and install my new heater core, but I don't know if I'll get to that. This is just an after work / weekend project and I don't have any kind of shop/garage to work on this thing in, so we'll see how far it goes.

So that's the status so far. Hopefully I can get it back together in somewhat the same way as it came out!

Right, so started sorting through the mess. It should be noted that I had the chance to buy a brand new fascia from Lotus Aftersales for cheap (like £45) at the 2009 Donington Lotus Show, but like a dumbass I didn't go for it, because I'd flown over and had no checked baggage allowance on my budget flight home. I really really regret not jumping on that. Of course they're all gone now.

Anyway...

I did block off the vacuum lines. Note: yes, I cut them to get the switch off. It was dumb, but those are included on my new heater core so I don't need them anyway...

Questionable wiring. Is this stock? (Note: I predict this will be a reoccurring theme in this thread.) It just looks a bit dodgy to me with the weird routing extra spade connectors bundled into the tape harness like that. Oh Lotus...

More mystery wires - these had to do with the P.O.'s horrid sound system install. The house-style speaker wire shows up at the battery compartment too, thankfully not hooked up. At least he didn't try to wire in an alarm...

The ribbon type wiring here is for this transponder thing. I still don't know what it did. GPS maybe?

Okay, I know this isn't stock! What the berkeley?!

Previous owner also spliced some wires into the clock for who knows what...

That sums up yesterday. Today's update shortly.

I decided to do some experimental weapons testing for the War on Goo. I took apart the headlight switch since I had it out anyway, to see if soaking the plastic casing in alcohol would dissolve it away.

Don't do this! It's a pain in the butt and there's lots of fiddly little bits to break. That said... The alcohol did an okay job, but it still involved some scrubbing, and it ate the rubber grommet on the inside that I thought was plastic. Didn't really need that anyway, right?

Tomorrow I'm going to try a toothbrush for Goo removal purposes.

More wiring hell. Of COURSE nothing is soldered or done at all properly. Lots of wires just wrapped around other wires and secured with years old, brittle electrical tape. No wonder nothing worked...

Mystery transponder removed... A little stabbery took the adhesive nicely off the windscreen.

^^ BTW look at all that pollen! No wonder my allergies are going nuts. ARGH.

Time for another round of... Is this stock? Some kind of bandpass filter for the stereo I think. It looks awfully tidy sitting in there but the P.O.'s crappy wiring goes into it, which makes me question whether it's original. Did Lotus put it there?

I'm not sure about what to do with these. A while ago I was driving around and identical one fell out of the driver's side under my feet. Probably why my RH door speaker has never worked. Here it is:

My inkling is to take them out. Don't get me wrong, I love having a decent stereo in my car but I reckon I could buy some Ebay-specials that are miles better than these things. Advice please?

ANYWAY... I needed the car back on the road. I need to go to the hardware store and pick up some things before I can finish this project. That meant putting some of the stuff I'd taken out back in.

First to bodge in the instrument bezel. I decided if I could put a flat piece of metal between the two bottom mount points, it would sit quite nicely on the plastic shelf behind the steering wheel. Now, I thought to myself, with all the junk I have in my office, wouldn't it be nice if I could just go in there and find a perfectly sized piece of metal with holes already drilled in exactly the right spots?

Holy E36 M3! I went into my office and found... a perfectly sized piece of metal with holes already drilled in exactly the right spots. Seriously, I didn't drill or cut that at all. I took it right off a junked metal frame for something that I'd scavenged from somewhere or other. Fear me, universe, for my powers are mighty!

Secondly I needed the wiring harness to go back in. Time to get with the unplugging. Always carefully mark what you disconnect so that it becomes even more annoying when the permanent marker wears off in a day.

Peeled the harness off the fascia and plugged in the bezel:

Headlight switch, now a la carte:

In she goes. Hook up the speedo cable and we're back in business. Looks like crap but it'll drive around fine.

...WELL, almost. Turns out you need the hazard light switch installed for the turn signals to work. D'oh. Fortunately I discovered this as I was turning from the campus onto the very quiet, wooded street that goes to the entrance. Back to the office we go; took the switch out of the fascia and popped it on the end of the cable. Worked perfect.

At this point my fingers were innundated with even more Goo, so you get no pic.

That's it for now! Tune in tomorrow for another installment of "how to expend significant amounts of time and energy making your car worse!" Well, I may have dampened the car's appeal to potential hot dates, but at least I haven't broken anything yet. Don't worry, I'll find a way soon.

Is anyone actually interested in this or am I writing it up for nothing?

Like an idiot I forgot it was a holiday today (not Victoria Day over here - some Christian thing, don't ask me...) so I went into my office this morning and of course there was no one else there. Well, I figured if I was there anyway, might as well do a bit more work on this thing...

So you'd think that in behind the face vents you would find some ducting, air, maybe a little dust, mould, and possibly mouse poops. Well in my car you might find all that (thankfully minus the mould and mouse poops), but you would also find... tweeters!

I have to say, I did think this was pretty clever... except that they were just sitting in there stuck in blobs of hot glue. Now I love my hot glue as much as the next guy, but there are right ways and wrong ways to mount speakers. This is not one of the 'right' ways.

Regardless, I tested them with my laptop, and they didn't sound very good, so out they came...

Speaker testing:

This worked surprisingly well. It even had enough power to drive the rears, although it didn't make for what you would call high fidelity. I now know two things that I didn't before: that all four standard speakers work, and more importantly, which wires go to which speakers, as the original wires were on the "unlabeled" side of those 2-way splitter things.

Masking tape - the tape of PROGRESS.

Empty! Maybe now the airflow in the cabin will be a bit better... Well, after I bodge the HVAC controls back in anyway.

Oh yeah, speaking of those 2-way splitter things, I still had one left in the car. Out!

Remember how I said it looked like a tidy install? Well it was as tidy as you could get with a ginormous blob of rubber weatherproofing tape. Sigh...

Another mystery cable splice, this one way over on the left past the glove box. It's the black wire spliced into the purple wire just before the connector here: Testing with a voltmeter failed to determine what it does. Does purple always mean +12V?

What the heck is this? Random turnable knob on the right side behind the glove box, right next to the centre console... It wasn't secured in any way, just sitting in there loosely.

It is starting to look cleaner in here, just a few more mystery wires to go:

Two permanent +12V lines?

The electrical manual doesn't mention this one. I would have guessed 12V from the ignition switch, but the mighty voltmeter tells me that it doesn't seem to do anything. I wish I could remember what it was connected to on the old stereo, but like a numpty I just snipped it off in order to get the thing out. There's no corresponding bit on the old harness, so now you can guess which body of water I went up without a paddle.

This is a nice, thick one. Also does nothing. I'm willing to bet I'll find the other end of it in the battery box, disconnected.

Weight savings!

Colin Chapman would undoubtedly approve of this additional lightness. However he would, I suspect, scoff condescendingly at the notion that I'll be replacing some of it.

Jay wrote: Is anyone actually interested in this or am I writing it up for nothing?

Hey! I'm enjoying this.

Besides, with all those wires hanging out, it's beginning to look like a Europa!

I'm reading this.

Question about the mystery boxes: Do they have a power source? Or do they seem to be a passive crossover of sorts?

I'm reading this too. Enjoying it, even. Keep up the good work!

I have been reading, just nothing to add.

Couple of things.

There are no soldered connections for production vehicles. If you see one, someone else did it. The best are a double crimp connection- one for the wire, and one for the insulation. If there's a weather seal, it's part of the insulation crimp.

And no need to ask about nylon connections...

Fun work eh. Keep the updates coming.

You are providing much needed inspiration to deal with my own brand of the Lord of Darkness: Lucas. I still have tremors when remembering the last time I did battle with Lucas components.

Yes, I'm reading, and mighty impressed with your dedication.

Plus, it kinda scares the hell outa me; that's one very convoluted wiring job!

Keep 'em coming!!!!!

I've done similar pursuits.....call it automotive archaeology. It's always fun to make things better while wondering both aloud and to yourself, "WTF was up with the previous owner??"

Admit it -- we're all guilty of doing similar stuff from time to time. Sometimes a corner gets cut just to get the car back on the road......and we all say, "just temporary......I'll clean that up later."

--or the ever popular--

"No one will ever see THAT behind the dash!"

Looks like the previous owner tried to install his own stereo system. What the Quartz crossovers were needed for I have no idea.

Keep `em coming, Jay. Great stuff. Why is it so often that "little" projects get so big, so fast? I've asked SHMBO to slap me the next time she hears "..well, while I've got it apart, I might as well.."

Haha, thanks guys. I've got essentially the world's least epic buildup here, just trying to write it up in a hopefully entertaining manner.

Honestly, getting a car full of hack jobs with the wiring is a huge pet peeve of mine. Granted I've done tons of them myself but at least they're my hack jobs, I know what's been done and why, and I can undo it if need be. Trying to decipher someone else's dodgy work is another story.

Regarding the black "2-way system" boxes, they seem to be analogue frequency splitters. They were hooked up so that the high frequencies went to the air vent tweeters and the mid-ranges to the door speakers (the rears were run direct from the stereo - actually they weren't, because the grounds weren't connected, only the signal wires!) Pretty sure this car had a nice sound system in it at one point, but it was removed and the POS head unit I took out was bodged in. No one installs tweeters without an amp and subs, right? ... Right?

Surprisingly little Lucas back there. The hand of the Prince of Darkness touched this one somewhat lightly... There's the odd part or two but nowhere near as bad as other Brit cars. Lots of GM though.

That rats nest looked like my old Sunbeam when I bought it.

I'm jealous because electricity and I never got along.

I wonder if that windshield transponder was sattelite radio or some kind of aftermarket door popper system. Lightness is better FTW.

Dan

I, too, admire your dedication. Great effort, and it must be satisfying work.

I removed the instrument cluster on my BMW not so long ago, to try and fix the non-functional fuel gauge. Lurking in the dark was a similar, (albeit not as bad) mess of bodges and make-do-fixes. Anyway, I pretended I hadn't noticed and quietly screwed the cluster back in place . Maybe another time.

FWIW, I believe the fuel gauge problem lies in the sender, not the instrument.