Jeff's Toy Box: I'm feeling blue

This Impala is a strange beast. In many ways it is leaps and bounds better than the Caprice. And yet, in many ways, it's in much worse condition. Take the dash board for example. The Caprice spent much of it's life with me sitting outside in the sun. From what I can tell, the Impala similarly spent most of it's time outside. Yet, the Caprice dash top only has a few minor splits in the vinyl, while the Impala dash is cracked beyond repair. So, I decided to swap the two.

Obviously, there's a bit of a color difference there. It's OK, we can fix that. SEM Color Coat paint is specifically made for fabric and vinyl. I've been using it for years and it works fantastic. It's flexible too so it won't crack or peel off soft materials. Conveniently, their 15393 Medium Gray is an exact match for the Impala's gray. I used around two cans to get a few good coats on the dash top.

Initially, I was just going to swap dash tops. But, you have to take the whole dash apart to get the top off anyway, and since I planned on selling the Caprice, I thought it would look silly with a gray dash top and blue everything else. The rest of the Caprice dash bits were in better shape than the Impala dash too, and swapping them kept me from having to peel more of that awful fake woodgrain. So, I painted all the other Caprice dash parts while I was at it.

The Impala's steering wheel was broken when I got it. The guy said it was like that when he got it. Just the leather wrapping was holding the hoop on. It was also mounted upside down, and the (unpopped) airbag was laying in the trunk.

My friend nearly drove the car into a ditch while turning because he tried to grab at the wheel and there was nothing there. How a guy drives a car that way for 10 years, I can't imagine. Particularly when replacement wheels are so cheap, the local salvage yard wanted $35 for a Caprice wheel. The Impala wheel is the same as a Caprice, just leather wrapped. The lack of leather wrapping doesn't matter to me at all. The steering wheel wasn't the only issue though. The shift lever mounting boss on the column was broken too, so the shift lever wasn't actually attached to anything. It just kind of flopped around, and in anything lower than N, it would fall out when you hit a bump in the road. Conveniently, the yard with the $35 wheel had the whole column with wheel and airbag for $100. I was going to swap the column out of the Caprice along with the dash, but for $100, it wasn't worth the effort to change the lock cylinders in two columns and have to R&R the column in two cars. Like my Caprice, this column was blue too, so it got a good SEMing. The blue wheel and airbag were scrubbed and SEM'd separately.