At 00:33:33 UK time on 23 November 2005 Glenn in Canada wrote:
"I have been making new interior trim panels, and recovering my cockpit molding. Things went very well, until I pulled off the front (padded) cockpit moulding over the dashboard. This piece is made of thin plywood, with rubber padding, and was badly rotted. I made a new plywood part using what was left of the old piece as a pattern. The plywood I used received 3 coats of varnish, and should resist rotting.

I then looked for a suitable replacement rubber pad, but could not find anything suitable locally, until I looked in the hardware store plumbing section. There I found a long cylindrical piece of pipe insulation, made out of closed cell foam. The piece was long enough for the intended application, so I sliced off a (lenghtways) section of the foam, and contact cemented it to the plywood. The recovered moulding looks very nice. The foam pipe insulation cost under $1.00 Canadian, and should never rot.

I just wanted folks to know that the pipe insulation is an excellent replacement for the front cockpit padding, should anyone else bump into this problem." - Glenn