gmtech16450yz
Jetboaters Lieutenant
- Messages
- 265
- Reaction score
- 518
- Points
- 157
- Location
- SF Bay Area
- Boat Make
- Yamaha
- Year
- 2017
- Boat Model
- Limited S
- Boat Length
- 21
The pad was "interesting". haha. Raising it up wasn't a problem, I simply made a wood base that raised the front edge an inch or two (don't remember) and had it taper back to flat on the windshield end. That gave me enough room to make a nice big panel to mount whatever I wanted on. The interesting part was I figured I'd have no problem stretching some vinyl or pleather over the plastic dash and down the sides to cover the longer area. Covering most of it wasn't an issue, it got ugly when I tried to stretch the material around the front corners. If you look at the pad, it's covered under the front edge and sides. That means you'd have to somehow cut out or try to hide all the excess material in the corners. I couldn't make it look decent so I took it to my upholstery guy. He laughed and said he'd rip it all back off and start over. If you look closely at my pictures, you'll see that he actually stitched a separate piece onto the front of the pad, that way he wouldn't have a bunch of material to deal with in the corners. It turned out great, but I felt somewhat defeated by not being able to cover it myself! No big deal, just cost me some money to have it done right.
So long story short, if you took the dash pad to an upholstery shop and said "make the front of this thing X" taller", I'm sure they could do it. The other way you could do it is to make the "base" look decent all on it's own and not mess with the main part of the pad at all. Just make a wood base and paint it black, then set the stock pad on top of that. It would probably look fine and be a lot easier/cheaper.
