Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
With the power steering & fuel tank leaks taken care of we finally focused on the instrument cluster. Here's a picture of the wrinkles in the white overlay on the speedometer.
I removed the cluster and had Spence dismantle it.
The speedometer face was rusty and had flaking paint before putting the last overlay on it. Even though I'd cleaned it up with lacquer thinner the paint beneath continued to flake off. I knew I had to prep it better this time. In this picture you can see the way it looked as I was in the process of sanding it completely clean.
With the face sanded smooth and down to bare metal the new decal looks pretty spiffy. We painted the perimeter white instead of leaving it black like before. It may help reflect light better this way.
Before re-installing the cluster we painted the needles black. The dash is running red L.E.D.s and the fluorescent red needles were hard to read.
No matter how careful we've tried to be when removing the gauges it seems we add a few more nicks in the black paint on the surrounding plastic. One of these days we'll have to re-do it but maybe we'll wait until the car goes in for paint in the future.
After buttoning everything back up we took it out for a road test to make sure all the gauges and dash lights were working. It seems as though the car is now ready for it's trip back to Des Moines.
With the power steering & fuel tank leaks taken care of we finally focused on the instrument cluster. Here's a picture of the wrinkles in the white overlay on the speedometer.
I removed the cluster and had Spence dismantle it.
The speedometer face was rusty and had flaking paint before putting the last overlay on it. Even though I'd cleaned it up with lacquer thinner the paint beneath continued to flake off. I knew I had to prep it better this time. In this picture you can see the way it looked as I was in the process of sanding it completely clean.
With the face sanded smooth and down to bare metal the new decal looks pretty spiffy. We painted the perimeter white instead of leaving it black like before. It may help reflect light better this way.
Before re-installing the cluster we painted the needles black. The dash is running red L.E.D.s and the fluorescent red needles were hard to read.
No matter how careful we've tried to be when removing the gauges it seems we add a few more nicks in the black paint on the surrounding plastic. One of these days we'll have to re-do it but maybe we'll wait until the car goes in for paint in the future.
After buttoning everything back up we took it out for a road test to make sure all the gauges and dash lights were working. It seems as though the car is now ready for it's trip back to Des Moines.