Anyone got experience of a flocked dashboard?

I'm making some modificatons to mine in the Coupe and I doubt I'll be able to match the grained leather effect of the original so I'm thinking of ways to cover the whole lot in some sort of consistant finish.

I've covered simple shapes in leathercloth in the past but this is a far more complex shape so I'm not so confident on that score. Anyone know of a trimmer that might tackle this?

I've wondered about just blending the new material as best as I can and painting the whole lot but not so sure how good it would look. What about a textured paint - anyone know of something suitable?

But...... a mate's son flocks things as part of his business (mainly interior parts on competition cars). I haven't seen either of them in a couple of months so haven't had the chance to speak to them about it but was wondering if anyone had experience of living with the finish. Does it collect dust? Is it easy to clean off if it does or am I going to be removing the flock with the dust and leaving bald patches? Obvously this last is going to depend on the quality of the job to start with. Is it a practical/sensible finish for a road car?

Iain

And the tumbleweed rolls past.

Fortunately the guys from RHOCaR had some suggestions and some discussions with guys here at work have brought forth some possibilities.

Stonechip applied for the texture and then a coat of matt/satin black paint sounds promising. I'm going to stonechip the sills anyway so I'll pay more attention to the texture with this in mind when I'm doing it. One of the guys has apparently done parts of a dash with aerosol stonechip rather than the stuff applied with a schutz gun an the results look good but the texture is possibly a bit fine.

Which leads on to
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PLASTIC-BUMPE ... 95#vi-desc
again this sounds promising.

Still no personal experience of flocking though - apart from a guy who had a Lotus Elite which had a flocked dash and centre console but he only had it for a few months so couldn't give any real opinion other than "it looked nice and felt good".

Iain

I haven't a clue about flocking but have you had a look at the FROST website? There might be some options amongst all the paints etc that they have there. www.frost.co.uk

Ive seen some dashes done, looks good, but i have not experianced how long it lasts myself.

I do have a Frost home flocking kit at home, might give it a try on soemthing small soon see what it is like. I wonder what my phone would look like flocked

Neil

I have seen it done on headlinings but they don't experience any sort of contact and wear. It seems to have gone out of favour now though.

I have always shied away from it as I have a feeling that it won't wear very well.

That was my worry. You usually see it nowadays it rally cars and the like but then it doesn't matter too much if it doesn't last long in those or if it doesn't wear well. Lotus used to use it quite a bit so you would have thought it would have been a reasonably durable finish.

I wouldn't think about doing it myself on anything as large as a dash it's too slow putting the flock on with the puffer and the adhesive has gone off before you get to the other end of the thing. There is a whole world of difference between a DIY job and a pro job.

I think the textured paint is the way to go.

Iain

I had the roof panel of my Libra flocked and it's been fine. It gets some wear when I take it out and shove it behind the seats.

So the flock doesn't rub off or get flattened where things rub against it for a short while?

This is the sort of experience I was looking for.

Iain

If anyone wants some flocking done, it turns out the guy in the unit next to us does a bit on the side. The entire interior of his Supra is done in it, it looks a good job, and it doesn't seem to be wearing off.

If anyone wants his contacts I'd be happy to pass them over.

hi iain, my son has just had his dash and door cards done on his rs turbo that he is restoring, looks realy great the company that did it is called electroflock in dudley, they do flocking for bentley and from the quality u can see why. they do it in different grades as well as different colours, cheers bob h.