Dash bezel texture

[peterro]

Hey all,

I may have made a mistake. I've found that very dirty (not greasy) interior parts can be easily cleaned by running them through the dish washer. It works great on plastic interior parts as long as you keep them in the top rack so they don't melt.

Anyway, I'm putting my dash together and was cleaning the parts in this way and it looks like some of the texture washed off the instrument cluster and switch bezel. It's not too visible since it's on the bottom of the pieces but it'd be nice to fix. Anyone know what could be used to put the semi-rough texture back on?

Thanks in advance.

[Challenger6pak]

You may have to replace the parts and stay out of the kitchen.  The only thing I can come up with is to use black wrinkle paint on the bottoms.  Sprayed evenly over the complete bottom it might work. I am guessing you have the ribbed dash parts. 

[Cuda Cody]

Use spray can under coating.  It works great.  Do both sides at the same time and it will look perfect.  Paint them once you're done.

[Challenger6pak]

Use spray can under coating.  It works great.  Do both sides at the same time and it will look perfect.  Paint them once you're done.

Good idea.

[peterro]

I'll give that a try on a test panel. It's unfortunate. I didn't realize the texture was added to the plastic. It looked like it was part of the molded piece.

[Cuda Cody]

Here's a dash that had one new panel and one original.  I redid them both with the under coating and painted them so they would match.

Try a couple different brands of under coating because each one has a slightly different texture.  Also during your tests, vary the distance when spraying to get the right texture / look.

[burdar]

Are you talking about the texture on the heater control bezel and the radio bezel?  I thought you were talking about the texture around the NON Rallye gauges.  I think the later is moulded into the plastic.  The heater control bezel is painted with textured paint.

If you are talking about the heater/radio bezels, use VHT wrinkle paint.   I looked at a brand hew bezel that Tony's Parts sells at the Nat's.  The texture is very fine but it is wrinkle paint.  Also check out this link.  Twards the  bottom of the page is a picture of the heater bezel.  You can see that it is sprayed with wrinkle paint.  This is on an OE Gold car.

 http://www.moparaction.com/Article/PoP/PoP.html

If you have the Rallye gauges, the black areas above and below the woodgrain are painted.  It's not just the natural color of the plastic.  SEM trim black closely matches the gloss level of the factory paint.

[dutch]

undercoating...?  well... I won`t say my hobbybob work always looks as good as I`d like, but if I had to pay big $$ for a resto, I would not be happy with that texture. 

[Cuda Cody]

This is just a suggestion.  Please use whatever you feel is best.  For me, I have about half dozen original dash pieces that I was able to compare to and during my test samples this was the closest texture I could find.  I tested everything I could find to get as close as I could to stock.  As you can see in the photo it's pretty nice and very durable.  BTW, when I tested the wrinkle paint it didn't look as close to the originals as I wanted.  Sorry to hear you would not be happy with it on your car, however I love it!  Have a great day and keep posting photos of your work.  Your hobbybob work always looks great to me!   

undercoating...?  well... I won`t say my hobbybob work always looks as good as I`d like, but if I had to pay big $$ for a resto, I would not be happy with that texture. 

[Challenger6pak]

Peterro, back to the beginning.  What instrument cluster do you have?  Ribbed, woodgrain standard, or woodgrain rallye?

[Cuda Cody]

Good call...  I think I might have been confused as I was talking about the dash trim pieces for the radio and not the dash bezel surround. 

Peterro, back to the beginning.  What instrument cluster do you have?  Ribbed, woodgrain standard, or woodgrain rallye?

[Challenger6pak]

I think he is talking about the bottom of the cluster bezel and the bottom of the switch bezel.  If so, my NOS Rallye ones are painted the same black that is on the light bar, steering column, glove box, ash tray, etc.  My woodgrained standard cluster housing has a rough wrinkle like finish cast into it on the bottom.  It is part of the plastic.  I did not have time to get out my ribbed cluster bezel. 

[peterro]

Yes, it's the bottom of the cluster and switch panel. I had always thought it was part of the plastic and not a coating. I'll post some pictures of the texture and what it looks like now.

[Challenger6pak]

Until you post pics, I am curious.  Which cluster do you have? 

[peterro]

Here's the cluster. I have the wood grain that will go back on top when ready. The picture doesn't show the grain very well and my camera battery went dead after this shot.