69 Barracuda Dash Bezel

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bob7four

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Are there any processes to restore a dash bezel. I have one crack, the black plastic is faded and the clear plastic windows look foggy. Hate to give Classic Industries the $700 for a repro.
 
Black plastic can be preped and repainted with vinyl paint, plastic windows can be made to look new with headlight polishing kits sold on ebay or parts store. The crack, depends on where it's located????
If the crack is on the dash you could do this:



Treblig
 
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The crack is actually in the bezel itself. The hard plastic is broken in one spot.
 
Sand a valley between sides on the crack, Dremel tool works great, then use an epoxy designed for plastic to weld/form them together. licking/wetting your fingers, helps you to mold the glue into shape as it sets up. You can also build a dam with cardboard and masking tape. Just be sure to keep all other areas bagged while you work on the bad part. Sand smooth using progressive grit sand papers till you get to 600. Prime, knock off the dust then start painting your first layer. Tape off and repeat. If you don't want to do the big dollar resto, I can recall an article in a Mopar or Hot Rod magazine, where they did a low buck resto using rattle cans and paint brushes. Little searching may dig it up.
 
The plastic lenses can be separated from the bezel by heating up the edges of the previously melted tab while putting pressure on the lens from the back side. Some lenses just fall out when you separate the back. Take the lenses and clean them with warm soapy water. Using Mothers polish, carefully hand polish them using a soft non abrasive cloth. Baby diapers work great. You may have to repeat the process many times over, but you should see improvement. If they are totally fogged through, and polishing doesn't bring them back, then you can buy replacement lenses on several sites.
 
Here is a perfect link for what you need to do.

1967 Plymouth Barracuda Dashpanel Restoration - Mopar Muscle Magazine

Someone needs to put a sticky on this.
Sticky? maybe, since there isn't better available but.... It's a one off. After you've done a bunch of them, you learn better. Did you notice the title says 67 yet the subject is 68 or 69? Anyway...
Conquer the knobs and bezel nuts, leave those switches in the car. If you bolt the 2 ALT' gauge wires together, zip tie the climate controller up, and re-bolt the steering column, you can move the car, even drive it without a inst' panel for a while if necessary. Been there done that. Took about 10 minutes to make a couple supports for the headlight switch and wiper switch. [o O]
Separate the center cones from the lenses first, before separating the lenses from the bezel. If you accidentally let your soldering iron touch and ruin a lens while going at one of those perimeter stakes... you wouldn't be the first or third to do that. Just be careful. Don't remove the black masking from the perimeter of the lenses when polishing.
If you have a trip clock in the speedometer and that little knob wont unscrew, there's a way to conquer that too. Just remove the 2 screws holding the speedometer in the housing. Once the speedometer is exposed you can hold that stem and unscrew the knob. Maybe go ahead and reinstall the speedometer to housing so you don't loose that rubber isolator between them.
There's almost 1/8 clearance between the plastic bezel and the pot metal housing most anywhere you look. So you can place a scab/reinforcement behind cracks and breaks. It is ABS plastic so the glue for plastic plumbing works. That is a very strong chemical bond.
I use a plastic welder since I modify the bezels ( see pic ). The little sanding blocks from Dollar Tree meant for finger nails provide all the small pieces of various grits that I need to get back to OEM finish.
If you were dismantling the bezel completely for rechrome you would need to remove the 2 green lenses which is a little tricky but there is a way. If you need to replace the 2 gaskets at the red lenses, you'll whittle those out by hand. The gaskets at green lenses are good examples. DO NOT USE SUPER GLUE at these colored lenses.

DeMonDIN  02.JPG
 
The year or make doesn't really matter does it? The process the OP requested info on is the same regardless of the model.
 
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