The other day, I had to remove the center portion of the dash - clock/ac vents, ac control, radio and cd player etc to repair the flip down door of the pocket that was broken. Anyways - while doing this I had the radio/cd panel section resting on the shifter lever, and the back of this panel (which has a lot of metal brackets) scraped the tan dashboard. These scratches cover an area abount 3 square inches and are very light surface scratchs (the kind that if it were on paint - could be buffed out in a few seconds). Any ideas on how I can get rid of these on the (vinyl?) dashboard? One thing I though of was to get some paint and match the color and just sort of rub a very thin layer with some pad or something - sorta like using a polish that's the same color as the dashboard?

Any one else that has had a similar experience or can give some advice on this?

Thanks
Kushan

 

I think I've got the same issue as you.

Actually, the "scratches" that are on my dash came with the car when I bought it. It was the wife's car and they have 2 young kids, so I assume that they did a lot of kicking and such on the dash on the passenger side.

Anyways, I thought they were scuff marks seeing that the dash was made of vinyl so I tried to scrub it off with lots of water and a brilo pad. Didn't work. Used simple green. It seemed to bring it up to the surface. Tried covering it up with colour matching pens which didn't match at all..

What I did find was that my leather restorer helped hide it a bit but was still visible when viewed in certain angles.

I'm not sure how well it would work if you used a polish or painted over it since I quesiton it's durability, but otherwise, if you could match the colour perfectly, that would be fine. I haven't tried that method myself however.

If it does bother you a lot (like it does to me), you could always replace the entire dash. I've already gotten the quotes from my Nissan dealer as to how much it would cost for a replacement dash, and now I'm in contemplation..

sigh..