Thursday, January 8, 2015

I've got wood, but it's fake.

I've mentioned a few times that the Impala  came with one of those cheap woodgrain kits all over the interior.  It's basically a fake wood overlay that covers many of the plastic panels in the car.  It's supposed to make it look "classy," but is just awful.  Really awful.  On top of that, the clear was peeled off many of the panels, leaving the wood exposed.  The lower dash, window switch panels, center console, and door panel inserts were covered with it.
It's cheap, tacky looking, and just plain awful.  The worst part is that this cheap fake wood kit uses the best double sided foam tape 3M makes.  The stuff just does not come off.  Even with a heat gun and careful peeling, much of the tape stays stuck to the panel.  This is one of the main reasons I swapped the whole dash from the Caprice.  I didn't want to have to peel this stuff off the entire lower dash.
The small parts got soaked in mineral spirits overnight to soften the glue.  The big parts took lots of tedious fingernail scraping.  How anyone could think that this woodgrain looked better than the plain panels is beyond me.



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