Cleaning up my 300 Dash

Big_John

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The dash in my 70 300 has just driven me crazy since I bought the car. Vert interiors get the snot beat out of them and mine is no exception. The numbers and letters had faded and the plastic looked bad.

Note the broken tab just above the odometer reset knob in the first picture.






I painted the black with SEM landau black and highlighted the letters with a Sharpie paint pen and outline the trim with a Krylon paint pen. It's not perfect and I touched up a couple little spots after I took these pics... It's a ton better though.



All the speedo numbers got wiped away with the prep for painting so I had to redo them too.

 
I bought a NOS clock and repainted the needles with some needle paint I found online.



I found a new air conditioner switch at Rock Auto. I think it was the last one they had. I looked for someone else and they don't list them anymore.



The broken tab in the first pic got fixed with Plast-Ex. I found out about this stuff and I bought it at Eastwood. It's amazing stuff! I fixed three broken tabs and a broken piece from plastic that holds the vent handles on the upper part of the dash.



These two tabs were completely gone.

 
Your dash looks amazing ( I said embarrassingly ). Great job.

I used that Plastex stuff on my rear seat trim panel on my Newport and it really does work. A little tricky at first but you get the hang of it.

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Just curious why you used the Sharpie brand for the letters and the Krylon brand of paint pen for the outlined areas - was it availability of colors (white vs chrome) or some other reason? I have never used a paint pen. Where do you find them? I am really surprised that the letters or the outline could come out so good by hand. Very nice!
 
I did some searches and found on a couple forums that the Krylon silver leafing pen worked well for trim. It has a chisel type tip and worked perfect for the trim. http://www.krylon.com/products/leafing-pens/

The Sharpie pen was also suggested a few times too. I used a extra fine and a fine oil based Sharpie paint pen. http://www.sharpie.com/enus/pages/oil-based-paint-marker.aspx

I tried another brand called Craftsmart and they didn't work well for me.

I bought both at the local Micheal's craft store. Probably any similar place (Hobby Lobby etc. ) should have them.

I practiced the lettering on the dash before I painted the black. It took me a few tries and I discovered that it was best to just get some paint on the raised letter, even if it didn't look good and then go back after it dried and do it over again. About three times for the speedo numbers and twice for the small letters. If I got a little on the black, I used a sharp toothpick and was able to remove the white before it dried.

The trim was pretty straight forward. I also found that it was best to just paint it and not try to get it perfect on the first try.
 
Looks fantastic, thanks for the useful tips.
 
I have been wondering what I was going to do to get mine to look better when I restore my 300. There is nothing worse than having to look at a tired plastic bezel on one of those cars that otherwise is really nice. You worked through all the issues very well. Thanks very much for sharing your methods and products with us!

Steve
 
Steering wheel and dash are very important as we and everyone who get's in the car is looking in that general direction and it's definitely the drivers interface

We've had Will's steering wheel and John's dash threads this week which show that point off very well.
 
Your dash looks great! I wish I could use the SEM paint on mine, but the numbers on mine are not raised...
 
Looks great, just for YUCKS I emailed "Instrument Specialties" to see how much to restore my 69 300 convertible dash and they gave me a rough quoat of $6000 ......No thanks, my pockets are not that deep........
 
Looks great, just for YUCKS I emailed "Instrument Specialties" to see how much to restore my 69 300 convertible dash and they gave me a rough quoat of $6000 ......No thanks, my pockets are not that deep........

That's nuts.... I can't even comprehend how they could charge that much. Granted, they are probably silk screening the gauge faces etc., I can't for the life of me figure how they came up with that price.

In what I show here, I have $30 tops in materials and probably 2-3 hours labor. The NOS clock was a little more but still reasonably priced and I think I paid $35 for the A/C switch.

I have the dash out and going to have a couple screw holes fixed, blasted and repainted along with the windshield header and redye the dash pad. High quote for that is $400 and they told me to expect it to be a lot less (like half). I can't do paint work on anything big in the winter so I'm farming that out.
 





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I was going through some pics and realized I never posted the final pics of the dash project. With the cold winter, the project came in from the frigid garage for assembly. I changed the color, new glove box, and neatened up the wiring. It's all back in the car now.

The stands were made from old bed frame angle iron.
 
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