Ed Taylor

I had posted earlier about losing the gauge ill. the other night. After pulling the cluster and trouble shooting with my meter I decided to replace the circuit board to fix this and some other flakey problems. The replacement was straight foreward enough and went without a hitch.

While I was there I also replaced the burned out D light.

Then came the reason for this post. For those of you that have seen it you know that the lighting for the gauge faces is reflected by three chrome plated plastic pieces. Well this plating degrades over time, or in my case a lot of it was just gone.

My idea for a repair was:
1. to carefully remove the three plastic pieces
2. used acetone to clean and remove any remaining plating
3. went to craft store and bought silver leaf and leaf adhesive
4. sprayed a light coat of adhesive and put leaf on the areas that had been plated
5. after it dried sprayed a light coat of silver paint to seal and protect leaf
6. installed plastic pieces and put pod back together in car.

Don't know how long it will last but in the dark last night I was VERY pleased with the results. Total cost less than $15 with a lot of leaf and adhesive left.

Ed
87S4 Auto

Mike Frye

Nice idea and well done.

Any pics?

Ed Taylor

Sorry, Camera on the fritz so no pics.

Airflite40

Or you can just use aluminum foil....boom bam done

rixter

ditto, though I'd clean the lenses good first

leperboy

This is a cool idea. I wonder if silver mylar would work as well. I will pick some up at the hobby store and give it a shot.

My old Galaxie has a lot of chrome-plated plastic trim and hobby mylar works great for replacing it as it flakes off. The problem is that it doesn't hold up well to a lot of touching and rubbing. In the instrument panel, that shouldn't be an issue.

Matt