WillcoxCorvette.Com. Dash pad installation Tricks

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1 WillcoxCorvette.Com First let me say, please do not call our sales staff for installation help, they have never installed this pad and won t have a clue how to help you. They will however give you my address upon request. Dash pad installation Tricks The new reproduction dash pads are a very good part depending on which supplier you use, there are two different versions. In 2013 we did an installation in our shop and documented some of the issues we faced with installing this pad; the pad was made by CA and to my knowledge one of the main issues was address after we did this installation so hopefully you won t have to worry about it. The main issue was the lack of a little reinforcement on the passenger side and without this the upper pad had a mind of its own. Later in this page I ll show you where this issue was and how we addressed it. I ll start out with a few of the basics on this installation and progress to the items that gave us a few fits. There was nothing we couldn t over come and nothing that kept this dash pad installation from being a complete success. Always remove the steering column from the car before you try to install the dash pad, it s the easiest way to do this job and detailed instructions can be found on our tech site. Don t trust pre-marked drill spots! One thing I can t emphasize enough is never trust the pre-marked holes in the dash pad. Test fit everything before you drill any hole! This is a must and to be honest, we don t drill any of the holes, we use a tiny pick and heat it with a torch to make a tiny pilot hole that we can then insert the screw into.

2 Pre-Work There is a ton of pre-work that needs to be done to the pad before you install it. You want to make sure that you have mounted the wiper switch and you can see in the picture below that there is a marked hole for the wiper switch shown in the red circle, Do NOT trust this pre-marked hole! You install the wiper switch by clipping it in at the top and then you pull it down to the block (in the red circle) and install the screw. As stated above, when we do this install we don t drill the hole, we heat up a small pick with a butane torch and carefully burn a pilot hole exactly where the hole needs to be and once this is done we insert the screw. You must be very careful when you do this because you could poke the hole to far and it will come out of the front of the pad and then you just trashed a new pad. Test fit the outer wiper switch bezel. The wiper switch bezels on the early cars were made out of metal, the 1979 late cars all the way to the 1982 cars were made of plastic. Both however are a press in fit and sometimes the foam behind the pad will make this hard to install. There are two different ways to address this and if you have already installed the wiper switch you should be able to make the bezel fit by heating the pad with a blow drier until the pad is soft, then insert the bezel and hold it until the pad cools.

3 The lower duct fitment. The lower duct adapters are in the same boat as the wiper switch mounting hole, don t trust the pre-marked holes. You use the pick to burn them as you install them. If the vent deflector doesn t fit in the pad, you do the same thing as the wiper switch bezel, you heat the opening and place the deflector in place and allow it to cool.

4 The glove box door and what is presumed a defect. I m going to cross this bridge and to those that have installed a dash pad before you will know this. The dash pads from the factory were flawed. There was a gap at the top and the top passenger side of the pad was bowed outward not matching the bend or curve of the dash pad. This left the passenger side looking quite sad but this is the way the cars were delivered from the factory. The picture below was actually taken from the factory GM video and we picked this apart in what we called factory flaws on our tech site. You can see the gap in the glove box door as shown by the gold arrows. I have owned several low mileage cars and this flaw was evident in all of them. I currently own a very low mileage 78 that has been stored indoors since day one and the same flaws are present.. The bottom line here is you can t make it better than they delivered the cars; it s not going to happen.

5 The glove box door Part 2. Before you install the dash pad you should install the glove box door to the pad and test fit it. Again, do not trust any pre-marked hole for either the hinges or for the striker. Test fitting the door to the pad is best and then make your pilot holes and screw it down. After you have the door mounted, then move on to the striker. Mount the lock in the door and then use this as a guide where to drill the striker holes. Mark the striker holes make your pilot holes and then screw it down.

6 The main issue and the missing reinforcement. One issue we ran into and one that I assumed has been corrected since we reported this to the supplier is the missing reinforcement bracket in the passenger side of the dash pad. If you look at the top picture you ll see the original dash pad had a V reinforcement in the passenger side of the pad. The new one didn t have this V and when we installed it the top of the pad didn t want to sit correctly. To fix this, we took some ABS we had here and used plastic fusion to bond this reinforcement into the pad as shown in the picture below.

7 The courtesy lamp, driver side. If you look at the pad it will have a mark where to make the hole for the courtesy lamp, it s a rectangular hole and unless something has changed we had to cut this hole out to mount the lamp. The left picture below shows where this is located and the right picture shows the lamp mounted in place.

8 The glove box lamp switch Just a quick picture on how it s mounted to the car. You assemble this switch by pulling the wire though the hole, then assemble the lamp wire and bulb together, then install it in the hole. Dash Bezels, Speedo and tach bezel plus the center gauge cluster install. The speedo bezel should be test fitted before you install it, make sure it fits the pad housing area when you do this. Do not drill or mark any holes until you have the pad installed in the car. Once you have the pad mounted in the car you install the speedo housing in the dash pad, mark the holes, remove it and then burn or drill your new holes. In regards to the center dash bezel, we have a pattern we use here that is simply made from cutting the center out of an old bezel and just retaining the old outer section. We then install this in the dash pad opening and mark the holes. We remove it and then burn our new pilot holes in the pad. When installing the center dash cluster its important to make sure you don t goof on the holes make sure the bezel fits flush on both sides before marking it. I hope these tricks help you in the installation of a new pad, I ll update this as more things come to mind.

9 Willcox Inc.