Lancia Beta Forum

Dear All

After living with the dreaded dash cracks for years, I wanted to reskin it but the cost of removal and reskin is prohibitive.
I have seen dash caps (US ONLY) and wondered if anyone sold them in the UK for RHD cars. ?

Any suggestions?

Hi All, After scouring lots of dash board doctors, I cannot find a Dash cap for a right hand drive car. 
Has anyone had any luck in using other materials to cover their dash with good result?  and Im not talking about carpet please.

ie: like suede or something else?   any advice welcome

A lot of the guys on the Stratos replica site use alcantara or similar, maybe one of the folk who have built kits (Matt?) can give you some advice?

I have wondered if the crack could be filled with some flexible filler etc and then re skinned?

Peter

I tried filling a crack on a Merc SEC I owned whilst in South Africa a few years ago.

I had to widen the area as the old plastic had curled upwards,even then,after widening the crack,the plastic still appeared to curl up.
Anyway, I filled the area with expanding foam from an aerosol can, finished it off with some body puttey,and then covered the whole dash panel in leather. Despite being anal with the smoothing, you could still see the 'crack' area.
But it wasn't too visible, and definately better than before.

I had my Hawk Stratos dash covered in black alcantara.  There's no denying it's very expensive but if it's done well it's brilliant.  Not sure a Beta dash could carry it off to be honest.

When it comes to trying to repair cracks I would be afraid that once the crack is there any heat (sunlight or other) would cause the edges to curl up and make any repair visible.

On my S2/FL I changed the entire dash to get rid of one small and one large crack.


It's a lot of work !


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On the upside once the dash cracks it does tend to sqeak less! As above, I don't think you will ever get an invisible repair. On my pre-facelift Coupe I wrote off the two big cracks as patina.

I quite fancy the idea of covering it in leather but I suppose the cost would be prohibitive, I do think it would look a whole lot better as the plastic on these late series cars does look a bit cheap n nasty I don't think alcantara would look right in a Beta. Our modern delta has a leather covered dash section and this makes such a difference to the interior ambience the lower spec cars with plastic look quite ordinary in comparison thinking the same effect might be apparent on a Beta?

Faux suede from eBay can work. (well in a gamma anyway)

Looking good Geoff!

Agree this looks great Geoff, but isn't it a custom built dash? Much more rounded than a Beta dash. Might work though, I guess someone needs to try it on a Beta?

I think the biggest worry would be if the dash has to be removed, I wouldn't want all the potential headaches during and after refitting.

Yes agreed I made the whole dash from
aluminum to save weight.

I must admit, I honestly can't remember
how to remove a Beta dash, although with
care most Lancia dashboards are relatively
easy usually only held by half a dozen nuts

I've recently removed dashboards from a triumph
Stag, a fiesta, a vw up etc. Much more difficult with
airbags, electronics and wiring.

I removed the dash from my pre f/l spider to replace the heater core and with their usual flare for the bizzare, all the in-dash switch terminals are the spade type without a block per switch.
the upshot was I tried to leave the switches connected while hanging the dash out of the door frames with bungee cords.
All went well until I broke the wiper stalk off the cluster as i thought I was saving time by leaving the lot in place.
There were no more than six bolts holding the dash in, but a lot of work all the same.
I currently have the dash partially out of my facelift spider while trying to restore some sense of normality to the wiring which was badly "modified" in a previous incarnation.
At least the switches have dedicated terminal blocks on the cable ends but I'm fighting the urge to remove it totally.
Personally, I would try to live with the cracks but I realise how annoying that can be, especially if the rest of the car is in decent shape (Something I don't have to worry about with mine ;D)