Restorng an SS dash

[Hank70SS]

Well this has been a real pain in the a**. I think I've redone this dash 3 times now. This time I think I got it, almost, maybe.

Cleaned it all with Easy-Off heavy-duty oven cleaner. That took off most of the old paint down to the chrome plating. My interior is 70 saddle but the dash, kick panels and package tray are a darker color. All they sell for a 70 is saddle, the lighter color for the rest of the interior. 71-72 Medium saddle is a perfect match. I used black interior paint from NPD, too much gloss for the gauge area. I know, should have gotten some SEM Landau black. I sprayed over the black with Krylon matte clear finish, knocked the sheen down and it looks good.

Masked off the black and sprayed the rest with the medium saddle, looks good. Outlined the round gauge pods and wiper/lighter letters with a Krylon silver leafing pen, looks good. Although I messed up quite a bit first try and ended up respraying the black. This time I taped around the outer edges of the pods so I could keep the pen towards the outside, it wants to run down the edge towards the middle.

Tried several times to do the outside of the gauge area with pen but it just didn't look good. The area is big, as in long, so you have to stop and push the tip in to get more paint. The edges are also wider than the pen so it takes multiple strokes to cover it all. Just wasn't satisfied with the way it looked, the silver leaves dull areas when you do multiple strokes.

Masked off the black and outer brown area, leaving only the silver edge around the gauge area. Sprayed with Krylon Original Chrome paint, that did it. The outside edge looks really good. Just have to wait for the paint to dry so I can pull off the tape.

I'm not good with detail work like the dash takes so this has been pretty frustrating. I'm pretty fussy though, so that makes it worse. Not perfect fussy but I'd like to get it the best I can, hopefully I got this time. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

8:00 PM, time to find something to eat and call it a day.

[andy]

Sounds like a pain! But the personal satisfaction you get when you're done will be great. Look forward to the pics.

[Black_72]

You will enjoy your dash everytime you get in the car, so the extra work will pay off in the future.
When I took my dash down to the chrome, I call the techs at SEM and they recommended using there black paint for chrome after a good cleaning with soap and a scotch brite pad. They said it has better adhesion to chrome. They said there was a slight difference between the 2 colors but I could not tell the difference.