Wood trim question
 

Are there aluminum backing on the horizontal wood trims on the dash? Mine are all loose, like the example below.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...-52-59_866.jpg

Yes. The bottom layer on the SD wood is aluminum. Aluminum/Ugly wood/Final Finished Wood

A friend of mine restores antiques & is good at clamping wood. He cut curved pieces out of ply wood, notched the straight back edge & used a piece of 1/4 round against the seat back to hold the wood in place after it had been glued. He did protect the seat back with another block of wood. The glue let go again but next time I'll try epoxy or something.

Set up was like this:

)_]---------------------/

(plywood)------stick--------/seat back

My 1984 has the trim clips... however, this could be more 1985 variation. :rolleyes:

Do you have a pic of the trim clips?

http://i1303.photobucket.com/albums/...pseee3f598.jpg

I have a bunch of trim sitting around right now, and it appears that all of them are directly glued on to the clip; i.e., that black thing you see is not an attachment medium between the clip and the wood.

Thanks for the pic. I think mine and yours are the same. Just that mine is broken and your's still intact. Looks like the aluminum clip separated from the wood.

How did you pull the clip from the dash? Butter knife?

Remove the access cover, reach behind the dash, unbend the tabs, then carefully push out from behind.

Try not to bend the flat part that goes against the wood.

When I had a 123 I tried everything to glue it back on, contact cement, 3M VHB foam tape, double stick heavy duty carpet tape, nothing worked except PL Premium construction adhesive.

But don't put it back in the car until it has fully cured. That stuff stinks to high heaven.

X2

So far I've had good luck with Gorilla Glue. And I used the stick method as previously described (stick to hold wood tight against backing. Stick wedged between seat back and wood trim).

When you buy those wood trims from Mercedes, does it come glued to thr aluminum? Or wood alone?

Scraped the foam away in spots and sand with 60 grit for better adhesion. 3 dabs of RTV should do it. I remember now I did a similar repair on my 83 4 or 5 years ago and it's still holding up.
At the time I thought the aluminum backing was part of the dash lol.

RTV can be cut with piano wire if needed- not so permanent as some other adhesives.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...1-50_765-1.jpg

Next one I have to do is the glove box. How do I get the sliding latch off w/o breaking anything?

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...2-48_430-1.jpg

I think the RTV might be good with all the prep you did. I tried to get the old sticky off and was afraid to sand on the wood for fear of harming it.

Glove box repair, on the wiki PeachPartsWiki: Glove Box Door Latch Repair

4 phillips screws and 2 round nuts and the glove box door is off. Couldn't figure out how to get the latch off and I didn't want to break it so I left it alone. Was able to only sand and scrape the ends so I dap of RTV on each end is all I could manage.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...2-46_962-1.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...3-07_542-1.jpg

The wood trim has a slight curl and has to be clamped. It remains to be seen whether the RTV is strong enough to keep it from popping.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...5-46_900-1.jpg

I only sanded the back and was careful to not go near the finish. The scraping and sanding was fast with a chisel and sand paper. About 2 minutes?

After this one sets up, one more to go.


http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...-55-45_338.jpg