Not only did I damage the vinyl with the foot on the machine, I couldn't get a consistent length for the stitch. I ended up pretty much destroying the dash cover I had made. Not a huge deal as I have enough material to try again, but I didn't think I was going to. Here I chopped up some vinyl, ran the fake French seam, and then merged the two pieces together. Bit of a different order, but the end result is... Adequate. Had I changed thread color for the last step so that I don't have white thread holding the two pieces together, it'd probably even end up acceptable.
I decided to try and just put the vinyl on the dash. And that's when everything fell apart. This stuff does NOT like to conform to corners. I've watched plenty of people on YouTube do it for the first time, and their results are pretty damned decent. Mine were not. Not even close. I'd need to make a mold and sandwich the vinyl in between the mold and the dash for it to work. Heat just melts this stuff. It doesn't stretch the way I'd expect it to. I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do. I knew in the beginning it was an experiment, and could fail, but damnit, I really wanted it to work out. At least I ordered the replacement parts ahead of time.
But since I already paid for the material... Why not give it a second shot?
Nope. Still ain't gonna conform to the corners on this beastie. Guess I need to go buy some flat black vinyl die.
On my way out? Another distraction! Impact bumpers arrived from the junkyard out in Cali.
Yeah, the lower front valance needs a respray. And there's a small ding in the lower rear. Eh, junkyard parts. Good enough. But that's a project for another day. Even if I get this dash into a condition I like, I really need to install the GPS sensor before I install the dash. So, let's work on that.