Challenger Repro Dash Cap - how it fits

I followed the discussions on this board about repro dash caps for E-Body cars.

Since mine was badly cracked and very brittle, I HAD to get a new one - and I decided to order one from YearOne (since they ship to overseas for reasonable conditions - I would not ship my core to USA first).

So I'll give you a number of pics that you can get e better impression about the quality of that repro an how this one fits on my dashboard.

First the two caps side-by-side - you can see the plastic core of the cap. Wherever the original steel core had holes for screws, the new one has not. Screws will go into the plastic directly.

You can also see some grey foam left over on the black urethan core. Removing a lot of that grey stuff makes the cap fitting better!

From the top there is nothing bad with the new cap. Where the old one has canyons, the new is perfect and shiny!

Except... notice the small recess on the right front edge over the air opening?

It has a stiched seam with a real thread. And it not only has a recess for the "Challenger" amblem, the emblem comes with the cap and looks good (will install it later).

Now to the details:

On the passenger side the edge of the new cap is warped - this gives a gap that will partially go under the plastic mouldings or behind the car pillar. But it will stay visible if you look at it.

On the passenger side the front - ... could be better, but it's okay for me.

First try to fit the middle moulding (right side of instrument panel). Uuups. My moulding had a piece cracked off where exactly the plastic core of the new cap looks through...

Needs some trim work. It was possible to bend the plastic core of the cap a bit more after scrapping out the foam behind it. Then I repaired my old plastic moulding using fibre-polyester. Then force it a bit, curse a litte... much better now.

At the driver side the first try to fit the moulding shows a spectacular gap! On that image the plastic moulding is in its correct position, but the side of the cap is not yet fixed to the metal dashboards frame (but the cap is complely fixed to the top of the dashboard frame with all the nuts).

That takes more trim work to do!

First bending the side of the cap down quite a piece and fix it with that small screw - remember: there is no hole in the plastic core of the cap so you can choose free where to place it. I just hope that this one screw can keep it there since there is now quite some tension there.

Next scrapping foam out from under the vinyl on the inside to allow the plastic moulding to go over this arrow-shaped edge of the cap.

What you see is the best I could manage...

Frontside is done and it will work for me with the trim work of about 1 hour. But there is also a backside towards the windshield...

The long holes for the ventilation are not correct! So the first problem is that the four holes for holding screws are covered by the cap.

No way to trim this! These holes are not really at the wrong place, but their shape is different (they are just "cylindrical").

Time to cut vinyl, just to allow something going through those holes (this will no longer allow to use the original screws - no way to screw them in behind the installed windshield.

This concernes all 4 holes in the dashboard frame. And yes, the cap covers some stripe of the ventilation ducts later.

Later I took long and thin cylindrical bolts to fix the dashboard to the front wall. They can be tightened from downside - holding the bolt with pliers and tighten the nut with a wrench.

The problem is to insert those bolts. I pluged them with their head in a piece of rubber hose to "extend" them...

Some more pics... at the front the cap does not exactly meet the lower metal frame of the dashboard - there is another small gap. But you won't notice this after installation - it's hidden "under" the dashboard.

When installed, one could be irritaded since there is a recess on the passenger side of the dashboard - additional to that "bow" of the ventilation opening that has a light knee (which could be because of not perfect packaging for the shipment).

But at the end - despite all trimming that was necessary and all that gaps and everything: I'm happy with it! Before it, I've had this cracked old ugly dashboard in and now there is a shiny new one! If you take a quick look from a distance - it's okay (it better is, since, hell, it was expensive together with shipment costs...)

I urgently recommend to assemble the entire dashboard outside of the car and check and trim everything - and maybe send the cap back if there is a too big misfit. It seems that they are not very precisely manufactured so one can be better than another.

To make this complete: All the trim I did not mention (instrument enlightment bar or speaker grill) fits great!

Looks great....Did they not offer a steel frame version? I've had nothing but problems with the plastic cores that I will not buy them anymore. The steel framed ones are much better.

Good job. That's no fun with the windshield still installed

They don't offer caps with steel core. I would have consider "Just Dashes" to rebuild on the old steel core - but in my case (I'm livin in Europe) I find it reasonable to buy one with core.

I'don't think that the plastic core as itself makes problems. It's the precision of the manufacturing process. I assume whoever make these caps, they do many steps in the process by hand and not very carefully - cause this would make it more expensive of course.