oceanlvr

So I wanted to run something by the group.
I have an 04 ES330 that also has the dreaded dash separation above the airbag. Don't worry. This is not a thread asking if anybody else is having the issue. I know that everybody is. And I already understand that Lexus is not going to swoop in and fix this.
I get that the idea of repairing it has come up dry. I know why it is happening. The vinyl is shrinking with age. (A little trivia. Lexus is not the only one to suffer from this. It is known that BMW over-stretched the vinyl on the door panels and now many have the vinyl separated and just hanging like a sheet.)

What I want to ask is if anybody has ever found something to cover it. No, I am not talking about an entire dash cover.
I know that there are entire dash covers out there. But the dash is fine otherwise....and to be frank, a velour dash is a little too cheesy.
I am talking about a cover...possibly also vinyl.....that can be affixed over the trouble spot...possibly with 2-sided tape or some adhesive.
I get that it cant be anything substantial as that might interfere with the deployment of the airbag.

What I am really looking for is some product that has been created. I am trying to shy away from having something that looks like one of my kids did it.
But if somebody has come up with some DIY solution that looks good, I would be interested in that too.

I am thinking....I can't be the first person to have this idea. But every conversation that I can find anywhere seems to be either, How much does a new dash cost.......How can it be repaired.....Why is it separating.....etc. None seem to center on the topic that I am bringing up.

So tell me.. have you ever seen a product address this? Has somebody come up with a good DIY solution? Is there a reason why this is not an option?

oceanlvr

I can't be the first person to have this idea.

FromFL

I have an '04 too with this problem too, but it's one of multitude cosmetic issues (bleached steering wheel, cracked seats...) so I just let it go.

I agree dash covers are atrocious. I did investigate a bit prior, though. We have a mobile upholstery vinyl repair guy in my area who does this sort of thing. At one point I was thinking of patching it with some kind of contact paper (vinyl) that I found at Walmart, which matched not too badly but for sure involved a lot of work.

If you Google "auto dashboard repair" you'll find YouTube vids and vinyl repair kits and so on and so forth; might be worth a look.

Ebay has used dashboards. It's laughable because they too have warping at the airbag area. It did see on there a carbon fiber style of covering material which didn't look too terrible but you'd to have to cut it yourself, with dubious results.

How about a new one? Looking into the service records for my car, I see the prior owner was quoted by Lexus $2,700.

If this car were worth it, I'd look for a replacement from a northern state junkyard. They don't have this problem.

BROCKES300

Our 04 GX470 has done the same thing. The previous owner put a 700 dollar dash cover on it that we didn't even notice, until we opened the glove box and the whole thing moved out of place. Luckily this was before we bought the car. We asked him about it, and he said "it's a Lexus thing" (not exactly true for all Lexus models...) Anyway, he showed us where he had put some filler in the cracks and sanded the entire dash smooth, then only painted over the cracks . My thinking is, if he would have just repainted the entire dash that new (slightly off from original) color it would have been fine, and he wouldn't have ruined the Dash again by hot glueing a 700 dollar eBay dash over all of that work.

Maybe you could take the filler and sanding approach and do it a little more intelligently? I can't imagine it would be extremely difficult, but it will never look exactly right. Like an older Lexus, before the brand lost their way and started cutting corners on things like this. I've never seen a 94 with this issue only post 02... Sad. ​​​

mmatheny

Get a windshield screen. I have an '02 ES300 that the dash is perfect and so is the steering wheel. I live south of Houston so some of the worst sun but I put my windshield screen up religiously.

oceanlvr

I appreciate the responses and ideas. I am very lucky in that the leather seats look to be almost new. If they were not redone at some point, then wow!!!!!! I did rub them down with Leather Honey and let them sit for a day before wiping off the excess. For those that do not know about this stuff, it is fantastic on leather. I have been using it for years on everything from car seats, couches, coats, etc. The seats were a little hardened and this softened them right back up. It has been around over 100 years. After that, I used a good auto leather protector to get the UV protection. Unfortunately, the damage is done on the dash. It has already separated some. I am thinking that the reason so many people are having trouble is that they are trying to fill in the gap where the vinyl separated. I can't imagine that will ever have success. I am thinking that there must be a way to not patch it....but cover it. I am not talking about covering the entire dash. I am talking about some sort of skin (something) that will just cover that area. I suspect it will be nearly impossible to get a perfect color match...so I am thinking about something that will look like it should be there. Maybe even with an L logo stamped into it. I will figure it out given enough time.

I have been going through the car for the last couple of months and fixing all those annoying little issues.

I rewired the stereo. Felt like I cracked the freaking Divinci code on that thing...lol
I had the Mark Levinson system. (Would have been nice to know that in advance)
I found a lot of color wire diagrams online....and at best, some were half right. Normally, you have a wire pair to each door. (+ and -)
This is true for the back doors...but not for the front. On the front, you have 2 wire pairs going to each door. On the minus, it drove me up a wall...on the plus, the splitters can be put in the trunk.

For anybody that needs it... for the 2004 ES330 with the Mark Levinson system....

Driver Door lower 6.5 speaker
Red /Blue stripe +
White /Blue stripe -

Tweeter
Pink +
Purple -

Passenger Door lower 6.5 speaker
Blue /White Stripe +
Blue /Yellow Stripe -

Tweeter
Green +
Blue -


Driver's side back door
Black +
Yellow -

Passenger's side back door
Red +
White -

I used RG6 coax for the pre-amp wires. Not only is it 16awg and tough, but it is also shielded. In fact, I had to shield the speaker wires in the trunk too. Totally cleared up the hiss. For those that do not know, you can shield a wire simply by wrapping it in at least 1 full wrap of aluminum foil..( I always do shiny out...but not sure that it matters).......then cover with a wrap of electrical tape.
I found the rear door panel speakers had lost all of the foam surrounds...so swapped them out.

The driver's door panel was a freaking maraca. I pulled it off and most of the peg mounts to the door had broken off. I spent a couple of weeks experimenting and I only found one thing that really worked.
Fiberglass and Fiberglass resin. If the peg slot was gone, you can rebuild a new one with pvc pipe (flattened) ( For those that do not know, you can heat up a pvc pipe with a heat gun and slowly flatten it out. It takes several times at heating it up and you do not want to try to pull it too much at a time.....in the final stage you let it cool while compressed under something flat......but eventually, you can have it flattened out.) Then cut off the pieces to rebuild the missing spot and cover it with fiberglass. If the spot is there but fractured, you can reinforce it with the fiberglass. It seems to be the strongest that it ever was. I tried epoxy, glues, etc. This is all that seemed to work. And the door is rock solid again.

Did the HID to LED Headlight conversion. The old HID bulbs were about to go...and the new LED bulbs are brighter than the HID ever was. If you do this, you will have to cut the wires going to the ballast. Otherwise, it sounds like a bug zapper going off every time you turn on your new headlights. (I had just used T-taps before the ballast at first to splice in the LEDs...and removed the old bulbs) Just make sure that if doing this for the ES330...and you have OEM HID, you stick with the D2A 35w LED conversion kit. You can get a pair of LED bulbs for low beam that put out up to 8500 lumens with those specs....maybe more...but that was enough for me.
Also had to grind down the leadlight cases to de-yellow them. You can try the vinyl wrap afterward for the headlights.....but you are better off just using the McGuires clear headlight protectant spray. You will not be able to get the vinyl to wrap without a heat gun...and it is hit/miss even with the heat gun.

Also swapped out all the interior and rear lights with LED. If you decide to do this (rear lights), your rear warning light-out alert will stay lit....even with all the lights working. Your blinkers will also have the crazy fast flashing (Old bulbs drew way more power than LED..so the system thinks working LED is a dead incandescent) . The fix for the blinkers is to put in load resisters. I suspect that this will correct the issue on the other bulbs too and make the warning alert go out...but at 7 bucks for a pair of resistors, not certain that the warning light bothers me that much.

Of course, the transmission was flushed. I can't speak for every single car...but I used the Valvoline Maxlife..and the transmission shift is notably smoother. This is not shocking as the Maxlife is several generations of tighter specs than the older fluid.
What I am starting to realize is that Lexus has gone to great effort to hide and mysticize what they have done.
At first, I thought it was to force you to a dealer......but after the Mark Levinson system, I suspect it is something else. I am starting to think that somewhere, in some board room, somebody realized that they were never going to make Lexus a success if people realized that they just bought a Camry with some extra sound deadening and a higher-end interior. So Lexus sought out to make everything as hard as possible to decode...in an attempt to prevent this.

Took me a little while to figure out how to install a phone holder. I got really tired of having to re-buy this cheap plastic item every 6 months, several years ago. So I started designing one for each car. By far, this ES330 was the hardest to come up with a plan for.
It has to be something that is easy to see, does not alter the original car panels, does not get in the way, and will not break. And of course, it has to look decent. There are painful few areas for that here. It finally dawned on me to use the ashtray as the cradle to mount the stand inside. Of course, then I had to overcome the significant slope downward that the ashtray cradle has when it is open. I finally got it worked out though.

Anyways...still have a few more projects to do. You should have seen the lady at Walmart's face when I was asking where the cheapest nail polish was. But I am thinking that the best way to remember the vacuum lines is to color code them with the nail polish. Going to change the plugs and thermostat. Will have to see where things go from there.

OK....guess I rambled enough.

FromFL

I use Maxlife too with great results. It helped to mitigate the transmission shift flakiness.

SheShe

Hope this helps, it is firm fitting ,custom fit to your make and model it comes with a silicone glue .I had tried vinyl repair match kit from O'riely's that was a big FAIL . The dash cover was around 170 and so worth it ,no matter how clean I kept my car ,I was always disappointed and especially embarrassed. I used to love my car and drive it with pride it was a pretty fancy upgrade from my Ford Expedition. Not so much once the dash started to defect, but no thanks to lexus I found a fix