- The other day I was driving
the old "Money Pit" Miata when I noticed a crack on the dash of this otherwise mint condition car. No! That cannot stand. I won't have it. So today we got to fix it. Listen, it happens, especially on cool old cars from the 90s. The sun cooks the living
hell out of your dashboard to the point that it becomes
super crusty and it cracks. It happens. But what can you do about it? Apart from spending way too much money on a unicorn un-cracked dash on eBay, is there a way to fix a cracked dash that doesn't look like trash? We're gonna take a crack at it today and test out three different methods for fixing cracked dashboards. And I really hope it's gonna work 'cause it's been a lot of work so far. I'm Zach and this is "Money Pit". Let's get cracking. (thunder)
(hip hop beat) - But before we get back to Zach we wanted to give a big thanks to the sponsor of today's
video, eBay Motors. - [James] As you guys know we did a groundbreaking, historic, never done before
competition with eBay Motors where Nolan and I got to
judge the best and worst cars that you guys have listed
on the eBay Motors app. - It's pretty crazy how
much variety there was. Everything from a 2019
Lamborghini Huracan-- - To 150 really crappy spray
painted pieces of trash. - (chuckling) It's true. - Like 3,000 of you guys submitted. We looked at all the cars, and we finally have our
winners and our losers. - [Nolan] In our worst place finisher, winning a $500 eBay Motors gift card is the 1994 Mitsubishi Eclipse. - Congratulations, you have
the worst car on Ebay Motors. - This is by far the worst car. - But we're giving this person over three times what
they sold the car for. - (laughing) Yeah. - So sometimes it pays to be the worst. - [Nolan] Now in second place, also winning $500 for eBay Motors is 1987 Buick Regal Turbo. - Oh yeah, this thing's cool. - The color I really
like, the paint is great. But just the shape of the car is so 80s. - I want it so bad. - In first place, winning a $1,000 eBay Motors gift card is the 1953 Studebaker Commando Startliner. - Yeah! - The Studebaker is just super cool. - I can't argue with it, man. Like I said, I thought the Buick was
gonna take it all away. And then going through I just really fell in
love with the Studebaker and it edged out the win. - So thank you to all the fans for listing your cars on eBay Motors and making this
competition such a success. - And now back to the Jobe. - So how do I fix a cracked dash? Well, I was wondering the same thing so I hopped on the old
internet to figure that out. And my research basically
returned four options. However the first option
is ridiculously expensive if buying an un-cracked dash, and in the case of the S14
that's like $700 or $800 eBay. So reality there are only three options that we're gonna be looking at today. The first option is
what's called an overlay. You get the picture. It literally just lays
over your cracked dash and just hides your cracks. This actually looks
better than I expected, it only cost about $150. The big question is how well
it'll fit on the stock dash. It's gonna be super easy to install. All they want you to do is
put some silicon on the back and glue it to your cracked dash. Which means that your dash
doesn't have to come out. Okay, so option two and three are predicated on kind of the same thing. We're gonna actually
have to fix our cracks. This is gonna be like using
Bondo to fix a dent on a door. So we'll go over this,
it's not gonna be hard, but the real question is once we have the cracks fixed how do we make the dash look good again? How do we finish it in a way that makes it look acceptable? Well that's where option two comes in. So we've got our cracks fixed
and we're ready to flock it. So, Flock It, you may have heard of it. Very race car, it's super cool. Basically, the idea is
once you fix your cracks you cover your whole
dash in this adhesive. Nice and thick coat. And then you take this shaker-mabob thingy and you fill it up with
these rayon fibers. This is like powder fiber. And you shake this fiber
onto your wet adhesive until it's full saturated, and then you en dup with basically
a seamless suede texture. And if it's done right it
can turn out pretty good. I've never done it but I'm pretty confident
we can do a for job. So this show be pretty cool and it cost about $70 for
everything you see here, which isn't too bad. But I think we can go even cheaper. That's where option three comes in. Now option number three
is arguably the hardest but the cheapest. I spent about $35 on these
three cans of spray paint and we're gonna try to fix
our dash to look like new. Now it's tough because the
dash has a texture to it and you can see it. So we're gonna have a little
bit of struggle on our hands but I think we can do it. All right, now that we've
laid out our options it's time to do the part of this that I've been dreading the most, which removing two dashes from two cars. Come one, let's go. Let's go take a look at this 14. So the S14 dash has some cracks and they don't look very
good, I don't like it. So the idea with the overlay is that they just lay on
top of your cracked dash and they just hide all your cracks. Not a bad option. Felipe, hey. On the up and up. Not too bad. I mean it fits pretty nice and snug, it's tight over this area. The worst parts are just
the cut out for the airbag, it just looks obvious that
you've got an overlay. But I mean overall, for $150 and also for taking
about two seconds to install that's not bad. I mean it blends in pretty quick, you don't really notice, it
follows these seams pretty well. The texture is difficult
but it doesn't look awful. This isn't a terrible option. But honestly, it's not what I want. It's not quite good enough for me. So I think we're gonna have to say "See you later" to the old overlay. And the S14 is actually
gonna get option number two. We're gonna take this
dash out, fix the cracks, and flock it. Now the Miata's dash really
isn't in that bad of shape. We've only got this crack here to fix and we've got a hole over here. So not too bad, this is a
pretty good starting point. Which is why we're gonna
use option three on this. So option number three
is the cheapest option but it's also the option
I'm most concerned about because I think we could actually end up making this dash look worse
than it looks right now. But the goal is to make it look brand new. Brand new like it just
came off the factory floor. Who knows how things will go? There's only way to find out and it starts with getting
these dashes out of the cars. Ugh, I don't want to. But I'm gonna. All right, listen, goals for today. We're gonna have both dashes
out of the cars definitely. And I would really like to at least have the first coat of filler on the cracks. Ideally, I mean, if we're
speaking really ideally, cracks on both dashes are fixed today and tomorrow all we have
to do is paint and flock. You flock with me? (rock music) - [Eddie] Put it on your head, you look like them guys from "Star Wars". - From "Space Balls", dude.
- There you go. - Ow, it's way too tight! (electronic music) Oh god. Oh, yeah. Dude, see how strong I am? All right, cool. Let's put this thing in the backyard. (Zach grunting) All right, that's one dash. (children cheering)
One down, one to go. (electronic music) - That wasn't so bad.
- No, not so bad. - I mean honestly it's very similar to taking out a Miata grill. It's a 90s Japanese car. - [Eddie] Miata dashboard. - This is not the grill? All right, first we got to talk about our method for fixing cracks. Now I've never fixed a dash crack but I think I've got a
good method sorted out. First thing we're gonna
do is take our dremel with this little bit here and we're gonna dremel out our cracks. We're gonna make a nice little valley for our filler to fill in
for when we go to fill them and we'll just make sure we kind of break the end
of any of these cracks. So we'll bring it to a
big circle at the end and that'll keep it from
cracking any further after we fix it. And then we'll use some sandpaper and scuff up the surrounding area. Okay, so I think we've got the cracks to the point that we're ready
to put some filler in them. So the first step for the filler is actual to prep it because this is kind of a tough surface for anything to stick to, this old crappy foam. So we've got to prep it and
then we can apply our filler. We're just gonna lay this
on pretty thick, I think, give it 10 minutes, and then we're ready for filler. Just gonna put it where
I'm gonna put the filler. All right, we're ready to put
some filler into these cracks. So filler, I mean, this is kind of like
what Bondo is basically. It's a filler with a hardener. Don't forget the hardener or else you're just gonna make a mess that you're not gonna want to clean up. Aw, that's the smell. Smells just like Bondo. All right, we got a chopstick, we're just gonna stir this up. It's a little bit separated,
give it a nice stir. All right, now we've got our hardener. It's a cream hardener
and it doesn't take much. I'm gonna shake it up first. You don't want that separated
ketchup goop coming out. That much, that should do it. Now it's important to
mix this really well. So we got our spread and we're just gonna, just gonna mush it around a bit. Looks like a nice solid color. Now we're ready to lay it in. See what we can do. Gonna try to fill these
cracks pretty well. Now this is probably
gonna take a few coats on most of these cracks, maybe more on a few of them, but that's okay, that's
how this stuff goes. You're just not gonna
get it all in one go. But we've made good progress. That crack is pretty well full. So we'll leave that alone, we can sand that down and
then finish it off nicely with another coat. Let's keep moving. (synth music) All right, so we got a coat
of filler on the S14 dash, cracks are starting to fill in, starting to look like we
might know what we're doing. So I think I'm gonna get a coat of filler onto the Miata dash and that probably as far
as we'll make it tonight. All right, it's the next morning. The dashboards have been drying overnight and they're ready to be sanded. That's what today's gonna look like, a lot of sanding, some
more filler laying down, more sanding, so on, so forth
until these things look good. And them we get them painted and flocked. That's the goal for today. I think we can do it. (electronic music)
(Zach clapping) All right, I think the S14
dash is ready to be flocked. So we just got to kind of
clean up our area a little bit. And then I need to wipe
down the whole dash, get it nice and clean,
I'll use some acetone. And then it's time to
start the flocking process. This is option two and this probably the one I
feel the most confident about. I think this is gonna
turn out pretty good. (upbeat music) All right, the flocking gun in loaded, about ready to pour out the adhesive. This is our $75 option and this is the one I think
I'm most confident in. I think this is gonna look cool. So, without further ado,
let's pour some glue. (upbeat music) Oh, he's moving quick. You aint never seen moves like this. Oh, it looks great, okay. See what we got here. Oh, this is a workout. I should of bought the airgun. So they also offer an airgun
for doing this same job, but it's an extra $60 and
I was trying to be cheap. So I just got this cardboard tube that's really giving me
the old shoulder workout. Especially after 17
straight hours of sanding. (upbeat music) I think that's all the
flocking fibers we can get to stick to this dash. I think that's it, that's a flocked dash. Now there's too much
flocking on here right now, you can see it kind of piled up. So from here I'm basically just gonna
let this dry overnight. Then I can shake off all
the excess and that's it. Then she's ready to go back in the car. I honestly, I think it looks pretty good. And once it's back in the car with everything put back together, wow. Can't wait. I hope the Miata dash
turns out nearly this good. Apparently my esteemed coworkers just threw the dashboard
to the Miata on the ground. - [Eddie] It fell over. - Fell over. I don't think they want to finish tonight is what they're telling me, so they decided to break the Miata dash worse than it was when it started. Christ. So now I've got more to fix. So back to square one. Where's that damn filler? - [Eddie] Hear that crunch? - Dude, not psyched. - [Eddie] Wait, Felipe,
reenact how it happened. - Did you thunder the earth? - No, I was walking and I was gonna set me
camera down on it as such and then everything just fell over. And then Eddie looks at me and I was like "Dude, it wasn't me." And that was that. - Sounds like a middle school ass excuse. - [Eddie] Yeah, that's
most of how it happened. - This was our in pretty good shape dash. The best chance we had to make
a dash look like brand new. (sighs) Fading quickly. Nah, I'm just kidding, it's gonna be okay, but I do have to fix these cracks and it's gonna take a few coats. So that means I'm probably not getting
this dash painted tonight. Which you can solely put on the shoulders of Felipe Armenta and Eddie Esparza. All right, so we're back
in action on Monday morning and we're about ready to
paint the Miata's dashboard. So the first thing we're gonna do is get this thing cleaned down, I'm gonna wipe it with acetone, and then we'll be ready to paint it. Then we're gonna try to match the texture and I have no idea if it's gonna work. There's a good chance it's not gonna work if I'm being honest with myself. (jazzy music) Adhesion promoter is
really important stuff, especially for painting plastic parts. This'll help keep the paint from lifting which happens pretty often. If you ever painted plastic stuff you've probably experienced that. So get a can of this. I'm just gonna dust it on. Do a couple coats like this. All right, so the adhesion
promoter is laid down, it's dried, and we're ready to start
laying down some primer. Now I've got this high
build primer surfacer. It's good for flexible surfaces which is what we got going on here. But the high build part
is pretty important too. This is what I'm gonna use to hopefully duplicate the
texture of the dashboard. So I'm gonna hit everything with primer but I'm gonna build it up especially high in the areas that we've fixed cracks and we need to duplicate texture. And then once it's all built
up and it like 95%, 98% dry, I'm gonna take this piece
of vinyl and this roller and try to imprint this
vinyl's pattern, this texture, into our high build primer surfacer. So this might work or it might just absolutely
ruin everything I've done and I'm gonna have to
start over from scratch and start sanding again
and make my life way worse. I honestly don't know but
we're gonna give it a shot. Wish me luck. (can spraying) All right, now when you're
painting pretty much anything light coats is the key. You're gonna get a better end result if you do a bunch of light
coats than one heavy coat. That's when you're talking
about primer or the final color. Light coats. Take your time, be patient. So now we just got to figure
out when this is mostly dry and then hit it with one of these. It's gonna be a little
bit of a guessing game, and by golly I might get it wrong. Well, the worse that could happen is I could do this too soon
while the paint is still wet and then I'm just gonna pick the paint right up off the dash. It's gonna look like trash and
then it's gonna need sanded which mean it's gonna need cleaned again which means we're basically
starting over from scratch. So I'm just doing it. All right, so we're gonna see, we're gonna try to keep this in one spot. Give it a little roller action. Oh boy. Yeah buddy. So we went a little too early there. Aye, aye, aye, that's okay. We'll let that dry then
we can just sand this spot and we should be back up and
running in like 15 minutes. God dang it. But hey, look at all
that texture we added. I think we got to split the difference. We tried it to dry and
we tried it too wet. Just got to get it right
in between the two. (can spraying) This roller could roll a little better. It's your only job. Hey, that doesn't look too bad. I mean, it's textured, it's not perfect, but it's not bad. I think that's gonna be good enough. We'll go ahead and paint that. (upbeat music) (can rattling) For that I've got this. This is SEM, I think I've
got their primer too. It's pretty good as far
as spray can stuff goes. I've got the Landau Black. It should be pretty close
to how the dash looked at the start of this, maybe a little bit more flat black, a little less reflective which I'm into. So I've got three cans of this. It's a nice flexible coating, I think it should be perfect for the job, and hopefully it'll look good. It's all about them coats baby. Light coats, light coats,
light coats, light coats. (can spraying)
(jazzy music) The Miata's dash is finally done and it's all back together
and ready to go in the car. So I'm gonna put it in the car and then we'll get a good look at it. I mean it looks pretty good
laying on the floor here but it's not quite the same
as seeing it installed. So I'm gonna install it and then we can really stack these two dashes
up against each other and figure out which of these
methods was the better one. (upbeat music) All right, we got the
dash back in the Miata and we can take a good look at it now. And it looks pretty good. And this was the cheapest option, this cost about $35 in supplies. This definitely took
the most elbow grease, but if we're being honest and critical, does it look good, yeah. Does it look perfect? Nah. No, you can tell where we fixed it. As hard as we tried to
texture the area that we fixed it's just really hard to do and it didn't really work that well. You can clearly see
where we fixed this dash if you're looking for it. Overall it looks good at a glance, but it doesn't look perfect. It doesn't look brand new
and that was the goal. So for that reason I'm gonna
have to call this a failure. Now let's go look at the S14. All right, so here in the S14
with the dash that we flocked. Now this was our second cheapest option at about $75 in supplies, and I think it looks really good. I was a little bit concerned that it wouldn't match up
well with the stock plastics, but I think it looks great. And the good news was while it was a little bit more expensive, only about $40 more in supplies, it was way easier to do. And I got to say that this is the winner for today's little experiment. This I think combines easy of
use with cost effectiveness and a good looking end result. I think this looks awesome
and I couldn't be happier. I also thought that this
was an appropriate time to throw this S15
steering wheel in the car and I think that looks cool too. So it's a banner day in the
S14 and I couldn't be happier. Let me know what you guys think, which dash you think looks better. And if you're in the
Southern California area and you have an S14 and
your dash is cracked, hit me up on Instagram @zachjobe and you can have that overlay
that we looked at earlier. And don't forget to follow
Donut Media while you're there. See you guys next week. On yeah, okay, so I thought that with the dash out I would find somewhere to stuff this ECU, but there's nowhere to put it. So don't judge me. It's gonna go in the glove box now. I just didn't have time to make that happen for this episode. So this is the next thing to be done here. Just don't mind this. Don't mind the construction.
