Typical - Like a baby only a Mother could love.

I have a plastic dash cap here that's free if any one wants to come by and pick it up. It will fit 85.5 and up - it has only one problem in that it will not fit on a Chevy Vega. I will probably wind up cutting it into pieces and throwing it into the trash can.

More of my personal opinion -

I am wondering if the windshield came out it might be easy to fill the cracks with epoxy (to stop it from getting worst), remove pillar caps, and clastic items/trim from the dash, then cover the dash in a sheet of soft leather (of your choice) glue it down, then put every thing back, just an idea, any one try this or think it could be done?

I once tried the short-cut of covering a plastic dash cap with Calf Skin and gluing it down with contact cement. That was mounted on the dash of an 84 944, and it turned out very good looking, and worked well for many years - It was very hard to tell that the short-cut was taken with the dash cap.

A couple of years ago I tried the same thing with an 85.5 944, and it never turned out because the dash cap never fit correctly.

By the time one buys the dash cap (Around $79.00) that will fit correctly, and the leather ($200.00), plus contact cement, it's not much more to buy the Taylor made leather cover. It's also not that difficult to remove the entire dash to do the leather directly to it.

Another note: The way the leather industry works to get a piece of leather big enough to fit correctly one has to but a complete half skin (Half hide). That is the smallest that they will sell that way - that's why the cost for a good leather piece is around $200. There again you will have enough leather left over to cover the "A" pillars, the Head Liner Cap (The one that the visors and mirror mount to), and even the arm rests on the door panels.

It would be VERY cool to have an interior that smelled like new leather...

Classic 9 Leather will recover a decent dash core in leather and ship it back for about $600.

Well Gents, I have to agree that the Leather Covered Dash is really the only way to go "IF" you intend to keep the car for a long time. Parked in a garage out of the sun and only driven on the weekends the Dash will stay looking great. The Leather Dash will still have to have a Leather Conditioner applied at least every 2 weeks to keep it from drying out, cracking, or shrinking. Let's face it, it is thin Leather after all. The same thing needs to be done to the Leather Seats to keep them soft and not crack or the threads cutting into the leather dried out, became brittle and the seams tore apart. I wonder how many people reading this condition their Leather Seats every 2 weeks in the hot months or even done so at all? It takes work to keep the leather looking new.

Cheers,
Larry

Same company also does "alacandra" dash cover. .. might be sturdier than leather.

I, like 89-944NA on the 2nd page of this thread, have a perfect original dash and of course I don't want it to start cracking.

So....... what's the best way to keep it from cracking? Is there something I should put on the dash like armorall or something? I'm guessing keeping it out of the sun and/or using a visor would help a lot.

Any other thoughts?

See the thread entitled "best dash treatment".