Midas Cars Forum - www.midascarsforum.com

Hello All,

Does anyone know if the dash moulding can be removed? I can see that it is a different moulding to the windscreen scuttle area, but short of removing the instrument binnacle to see of there are any fixings. I cannot tell how it is fixed!

I unearthed the convertible from the garage today. It was put in the garage in October 2008 when the road tax ran out and has not seen the light of day since! I turned the key in the ignition, the engine turned over a few times pumped some fuel through to the carb. Then it started! I haven't even charged the battery.
I'm just wanting to get it ready for MOT, ready for Stoneliegh.

Alan

The dashboard of the Midas models is part of the construction and is moulded in. It's a nuisance for working on the car, but from an engineering point of view it gives great torsional rigidity to the car.
Cheers, Hans

Hi Alan,

Are you refering to the main dashboard moulding or the fascia moulding that houses the instruments and switches?
The main moulding is bonded to the front bulkhead/scuttle and forms part of the structure, so removal would be a major job.

The fascia moulding should be removable, but it depends on who built the car. On some cars it is held on by external screws, but I guess this is not the case with your car. I have also come across cars where the fascia has been bonded in place, which makes removal rather difficult.

My own approach is to use big head fasteners bonded to the back of the fascia so that I can bolt it into place using wing nuts from the back. This means that the radio and instrument cluster have to be removed first, but then the fascia and switchgear are easily removed. To make fitting and removal of the instrument cluster simple, I cut out the instrument housing from the Metro dash and bond it to the fascia moulding.
The newer Rover Metro/100 instrument housing can also be adapted for this purpose with a little work as the instrument cluster is basically the same.

I hope this is of some help.

Alistair

Thank you Hans and Alistair for the replies.

Some months ago, I removed all of the trim around the windscreen frame looking for a fixing position, to fix the header rail of the windscreen to the rear roll cage. All in the quest to eliminate scuttle shake! The reason I started thinking about this is because I went to visit someone local to me who is building a fiberglass bodied Mini with a Honda type R engine fitted to the car. He had a very nice roll cage built by a firm which is local to me and I was thinking ( not a good thing), that maybe I could get a front hoop made which was fixed to the floor, then went vertically up the door frame picking up the door hinges and then around the windscreen frame, back to the floor on the other side of the car. Then attach front and back roll cages together. Hope this makes sense!

I suppose if you were to go to the extreme, you could remove the dash moulding and fit a front roll cage and brace the front roll cage horizontally at knee level (under the dash) in the car, then replace the dash moulding. The roll cage would put the strength back into th car. But this seems a big task just as I was going to put the car back on the road for the summer. I think that I may go back to just a tube along the top of the screen, which in turn connects to the rear roll cage. My car is a GTM car with the 20mm sandwiched floor!

Alan