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MG MGA - coupe dash rail pad

I know this is a longshot, but does anyone have a useable coupe dash rail pad they would sell me? It seems that the repros from Moss and SF are way off the original dimensions. I will patch up anything that is even close to useable.

Thanks! George
George G.

George

No takers so far.

Do you have the solid wooden ends? If you do, the arc over the dash should be easy to make in plywood. The step in the ends which accepts the plywood should give you the thickness of the ply which is probably 1/4". I have some pictures if those would help, but no dimensions.

I believe bobs77vet in Autoshrine had refurbished this item and you could search through his 126 pages or email him.

Cheers

Dave

small

Dave, I have the wood piece, with the wood ends. I'm looking for the "rubber" bit, approx. 26" long I guess, that is covered with the Vynide and attached to the wooden piece.

Thanks, George
George G.

I also found the SF sponge rubber to be a poor shape but, not only this, I found stretching the vinyl over the sponge was a bit tricky. If the stretching is at all uneven over the 42" length it shows up on the finished product with varying compression of the sponge.
Add on to this the fact that the 1/4" plywood I had ordered for the backing turned out to be 5mm and the 1/4" tacking staples I had for the rear were too long and poked through the ply.

So to solve all these problems in one fell swoop I decided to make a solid cockpit rail and forget the sponge section.

I bought a piece of 4" x 1" sawn ash and made the rail from this. I used a spokeshave for shaping and tried to simulate the rail section of the door caps i.e. 3/4" thick by approx. 1 1/8" wide. You know the top face of the front rail will be a continuation of the scuttle surface and I think I made the bottom face more or less parallel to this.

I also made a couple of door rails (roadster) from the same wood because the repro. ones I had were way off the shape of the unusable original one I had.

It's not possible to tell by just looking that there is no sponge present and I think using solid wood gives a very good result. I'm not worried about head damage in the event of a collision as I do have seat belts installed.................Mike
Mike Moore

George

If you have all the wooden bits the foam covers the plywood section and mimics the shape of the solid end pieces where the foam ends.

I used some 15mm ID foam pipe insulation cut into two semicircles along its length and shaved the tangents to the semicircles to the width of the ply, stuck this to the ply and covered it in vynide, the same material that will cover the dash.

If you text me your email address to +447504901022 I will send you some pictures and you can get started.

Cheers

Dave
small

It's just over three years since I did my dash rail; What is supplied now, or from different vendors, might have changed.
I can't find any notes or pictures of the work, so with those caviats and working from memory ...

The main arc of the piece was too thin, but I had some ply of suitable thickness to make it up so that the rubber/foam fitted pretty well to the end pieces. I found the sponge/foam to be an ok shape.
The end pieces needed a little reshaping - and possibly shortening at one end - to fit neatly on my dash, but maybe that was just my car - after 50 odd years who knows what has got a little out of shape. Anybody with decent wood working skills could probably make the whole thing in not too much time ( and at a considerable cost saving ).

I agree that stretching the vinyl over the sponge is tricky. The trick is to get the right tension, I think just tight enough to just start compressing the sponge. If I had any spare vinyl I might have practiced first with varying tension.
As Mike says, if the stretching is at all uneven over the length it shows up. Mine is a little uneven because I didn't put in enough staples, so use plenty, close together.

If anybody follows Mike's example and makes a solid rail without the sponge then I expect tensioning the vinyl over a solid rail might be a good bit easier.

And just to clarify, the vinyl fits over the whole wood+foam assembly, the foam is not covered separately "and attached to the wooden piece".

The picture is my car, somebody else took it a couple of weeks ago at an event.

Good luck,

Jim

J N Gibson

Jim - very nice result, your dash looks great. I have covered my dash, also looks very good IMO. Now I want to get the rail pad right. What is that switch where the standard turn signal usually goes?

Dave - I had thought of trying pipe insulation, maybe I'll give it a chance to work.

Thanks!
George G.

Geeorge, that is my "temporary" turn signal switch.

It's just a two way, centre off switch. Intended to be relaced when (if) I ever get the standard delay switch working. But it's been there a couple of years so I'm getting used to it. I may just change it for a more robust version with a longer stalk.

A reminder buzzer is also on my list of little jobs to get round to; I don't always hear the flasher unit clicking and the panel lamp is dim and hidden by my left hand.
J N Gibson

This thread was discussed between 28/06/2016 and 30/06/2016

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