Broken dash

[BLES]

Anyone else had this happen? Occurred while parked for several years. I assume my only fix is a complete dash replacement.? Anyone done that?

[Gary Lewis]

I've seen cracked dashes, but not truly broken like that one is.

As for fixing, you'd have to glue fish plates on the back to keep it together.  I don't know if there are places where you could get enough "meat" back there to hold it, but I've not looked.  And even then you'll have a crack showing.

[delco1946]

Can’t say as I’ve ever seen that. Especially if the truck wasn’t moving that suggests that the piece was under some sort of pressure, torsion, or bending forces to make a crack like that. Otherwise the only thing I could think of would be a manufacturing defect at that point in the plastic which seems uncommon/unlikely.

Black is not a common color to find at the junkyard either, at least in my neck of the woods. I would double check to make sure that the cab doesn’t seem to be warped/damaged or that the supporting braces in the center of the dash aren’t out of sorts, just to be safe be fore you go to the trouble of fixing.

[BLES]

Thanks guys. The cab is very solid. It started as a very small crack and "grew" over the years while parked. We do have very extreme temps and I think that and age just took it's toll. I think I'll just repair as Gary suggested. Just wondered if anyone else had ever done it before I "re-invent the wheel" as far as repair method.

[FuzzFace2]

What you have going for you is it is black and a easy color to paint with SEM semi gloss black.

You will need to remove that part for any kind of fix.
From the back side I would glue them together with a backer or fish plate as posted.
Now on the front side there is a product called Plastex https://www.plastex.net/
that comes with silicon chunks you can heat in hot water and press it to the texture of the area to get texture on it.
You use the chunk and when you use the plastex to fill in the crack you press the texture back in to the crack to blend it in.

Then you wash the full part with soap & water a few times and let dry.
Once dry you can use the SEM products and paint it to look new and bolt it back in.

I used the Plastex on my door panels to repair some cracks and built a forum to fill in a area that was missing by the slider lock.
I first used it on the dash of my 70 AMC Javelin.
Dave ----

ps for glue on the back side you can use fiber glass & rosin. I used it to "glue" in the HVAC part I took from 1 dash to fix the AC dash in my truck.

[kramttocs]

Add me to the list of never seeing one crack like that in normal usage. I see them in the JY but that's after they've been lifted, twisted, dropped, etc by the fork lift. Dave is exactly right - the color works in your favor for a repair here.

[1986F150Six]

This eBay link provides photos of the back side...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/FORD-F-150-250-350-TRUCK-BRONCO-DASH-ASSEMBLY-GREEN-1980-1985/154110650591?hash=item23e1b5e8df:g:KRAAAOSwYAFfc88n