I have a 1969 Cougar with sticky dash pad syndrome. The problem hasn’t started until recently. I currently have the dash pad off and I cleaned up the residue with Goo Gone and followed up with Dawn soap and water a couple times to clean it up. I am trying to find a solution to seal it up. My dash pad is in excellent shape, except that the color has faded on top from maroon to almost black – but I really don’t want to dye it, I just want to seal it.
I have read where folks have successfully used SEM Colorcoat to re-dye the pad after they have had the sticky problem. Does the Colorcoat seam to remedy this? Or does the stickiness come back?
I understand that SEM also has a product called Tac-Free that can be used on top of the Colorcoat. SEM says that is a flexible satin top coat used to eliminate plasticizer migration on coated surfaces.
So I called SEM tech support… support told me that the odds are that the vinyl is not breaking down by “plasticizer migration”, but instead the problem is probably the adhesive or foam under the vinyl that’s breaking down and weeping through the vinyl. (Support said “plasticizer migration” is a common issue with newer cars, but vintage cars may have this other issue.) They said the Tac Fee product will probably help with this, and can be applied directly on top a properly prepped dash pad without the Colorcoat. They said if I can apply Colorcoat on top of the Tac Free later if I wanted to.
So that’s what I was told… but I hate to be the first to try this out. Has anyone had success using the Tac Free product? Or a similar sealing product?