1964 Barracuda Dashboard Switch Bezels without transmission pushbuttons
Greetings all,
Work and planning is underway to bring back my recently rescued ‘64 Barracuda. The car was originally a 273 and a pushbutton AT but now has a couple of wide open spaces where they use to live. The plan is to run a newer (post 1967) 225 and 904 as cheap replacements. Obviously, a newer 904 mean goodbye pushbuttons and hello floor shifter. I know they are (were) cables being made to adapt the buttons to the newer 904s, but that is just not in the budget. My concern is I have not been able to locate the switch bezel (to the left of the steering wheel; on the dash) that is blank (where the shifter pushbuttons would have lived) for the manual transmission models. I see reproductions and good used bezel WITH pushbuttons all over the place, but I have been on the lookout for a “blank” bezel for a few months now and found zip. I can just grind down the areas on the raised areas around the buttons and park lever on the pushbutton bezel I have now with a dremel tool then cut out a thin piece of ABS plastic sheeting with a pebble textured surface, glue it over the pushbutton area, and paint the whole thing with chrome paint if I have to, but I would like to run down the correct cover if they are still reasonably priced. Now, back in the late 1980-early 1990s when I was a dumb teenager and ‘64 Valiants were not an uncommon discovery in junkyards, I used to see 3 speed ‘64 Valiants with these bezels regularly. Nobody had any use for them back then and I am sure I could have grabbed all I could find back then for somewhere between free and a few dollars! But, those days are long past and so now, are these bezels a rare item or am I just out of luck in searching so far? How much is reasonable to pay for a decent used one; probably with bad chrome plate on the plastic, since that’s just the way the used dash covers are these days?
Greetings all,
Work and planning is underway to bring back my recently rescued ‘64 Barracuda. The car was originally a 273 and a pushbutton AT but now has a couple of wide open spaces where they use to live. The plan is to run a newer (post 1967) 225 and 904 as cheap replacements. Obviously, a newer 904 mean goodbye pushbuttons and hello floor shifter. I know they are (were) cables being made to adapt the buttons to the newer 904s, but that is just not in the budget. My concern is I have not been able to locate the switch bezel (to the left of the steering wheel; on the dash) that is blank (where the shifter pushbuttons would have lived) for the manual transmission models. I see reproductions and good used bezel WITH pushbuttons all over the place, but I have been on the lookout for a “blank” bezel for a few months now and found zip. I can just grind down the areas on the raised areas around the buttons and park lever on the pushbutton bezel I have now with a dremel tool then cut out a thin piece of ABS plastic sheeting with a pebble textured surface, glue it over the pushbutton area, and paint the whole thing with chrome paint if I have to, but I would like to run down the correct cover if they are still reasonably priced. Now, back in the late 1980-early 1990s when I was a dumb teenager and ‘64 Valiants were not an uncommon discovery in junkyards, I used to see 3 speed ‘64 Valiants with these bezels regularly. Nobody had any use for them back then and I am sure I could have grabbed all I could find back then for somewhere between free and a few dollars! But, those days are long past and so now, are these bezels a rare item or am I just out of luck in searching so far? How much is reasonable to pay for a decent used one; probably with bad chrome plate on the plastic, since that’s just the way the used dash covers are these days?