Hey all. I'm in the process of restoring a 1984 928S, and as a part of the project I've decided to replace the HVAC Climate Control bezel as mine has some cracking near the number 65. I've looked around and couldn't find anyone that makes a replacement bezel in factory colors, so I've decided to have a local print shop clone the bezel graphics and duratrans print it onto a polycarbonate material used in light box displays and the like. The result should be an extremely close match to the original bezel, printed on a more durable material.

Before submitting the work order I wanted to know if anyone here knows a place that already offers a replacement HVAC bezel, and if not, is anyone else interested in picking one up? If there is enough interest I'll have a bunch made, and I'll sell them at cost. Price should be $10 each or less. I'm trying to get an idea of how many to order, so please chime in.

If someone is already selling replacement bezels, please let me know.

Thanks much!

 

I'm interested in the group buy you mention above. please advise when read to order.

Thanks, Gary

 

I went ahead and placed an initial order for 10 bezels. There's a 2 week lead time on having these made, but when they come in I'll scan the original and reproduction bezels and post them to this thread for comparison.

 

Jeff,
Count me in on the balance left over.
Roger

 

I'll take one

 

The bezels have come in, and they turned out fantastic!!



The top 10 are the new ones, the bottom one is the original. If you look carefully, the new ones are brighter, and the whites are whiter than in the original, likely due to it's age. The blue colored numbers are just a slightly lighter color blue than the original. Honestly, I think the new ones look much better than the original.



Another comparison - new one is on the top, old one is on the bottom.



The surface of the new bezel is slightly textured compared to the smooth surface of the original. Here, the original is on the left, and the new one is on the right. The purpose of the texturing is to prevent minor scratches and such from becoming visible. The material these are made out of is a more durable polycarbonate than the plastic the original bezels were made out of. Additionally, the original bezel was .02" thick and printed on the back. The new bezels are .01" thick, with another .01" piece of polycarbonate adhered to the back. The advantage is that the image is protected between the two layers, as opposed to simply being sandwiched up against the plexiglass backing piece. This will prevent vibrations or impacts on the front of the bezel from causing the image to become scratched or spotted.



Here you can see how the exposed image on the back of the original bezel was damaged from being pressed up against the plexiglass backing. The new bezel has the image protected between 2 layers of polycarbonate.

I had asked the printing company to adhere the two pieces together for me before cutting the bezels out, but somehow the request got dropped. The result is that I glued the two pieces of polycarbonate together after they were cut using double backed 3M tape #889. This is an acid free tape that won't yellow, and is used in photography and film. The edges of the bezel may have a bit of tackiness to them resulting from the tape being added after they were cut. If I place any orders in the future I'll make sure that they glue the pieces together before cutting them since it was kind of a pain in the butt to do.



Here we see the bezel illuminated in the HVAC head using the original incandescent bulb. The black on the original bezel is slightly better at blocking 100% of the light. You can see that a very small amount of light is bleeding through the black making it slightly lighter against a pure black background. Kind of like the difference between a TV displaying a black screen while on, compared to when it's off. No one will notice this though unless they are really looking carefully for differences with the original.

I would recommend replacing the incandescent bulb with an LED and then adding a resister to achieve the exact desired brightness. Because the blues, reds and whites are also slightly brighter (again, probably due to age of the original bezels), if you use an LED with a resister, you can get the exact same look and brightness of the original when it was brand new. I'll update the thread with the correct replacement LED and resister value after trying a few different ones and determining which one works best.



This is a teaser for the rest of the HVAC project I'm working on. Yes, that is the exact same bezel in all the previous images with a few modifications to the HVAC head. If a person were to simply put a blue LED behind the bezel, the red lettering would be completely black in the dark, as I'm sure several here have discovered. It took me awhile to figure out how to do this, and I'll write up a how-to in the near future on rebuilding the HVAC head, replacing all the fiber optics with LEDs, illuminating the fan ****, and how to produce a blue/red illumination from a white/blue/red imaged bezel.

For anyone interested in purchasing a new bezel from me, the price is $10 each. Send the appropriate shipping info and payment via paypal to jshuberg [at] gmail [dot] com. I'm not making any money on these, I'm actually in the hole on them and would have to sell 40 before breaking even. If it turns out there's a demand I can have some more made, but I'm not planning on it at this point. I'll wait a week or two and then send the remainder to Roger.

I hope these are able to help some people out

 

VERY nice work. I don't think you're going to have any problem breaking even on this. If that company could make a "big" bezel for the 87+ instrument cluster I could see that being a hit too.

 

Paypal payment sent!

 

They look really good. I'm looking forward to seeing other output from this interesting project.

 

If you're offering these for sale, I'd be interested in buying one.

EDIT- Duh, saw the end of your post.....

 

Received bezel last week via USPS and installed it this morning in the HVAC head. Minimal trimming required to fit on one side. Bezel makes the unit look brand new. I will post pictures tonight when it's dark out and with the interior dash lights on.

 

Is there any possibility of having a bezel made in Celcius?

Product looks very good.

 

I like that....without me having to go look, is that the same as a 78's?

 

Thanks all for the interest!

If I'm not mistaken, it's not just simply that the temperature numbers are different for a Celsius bezel, but that the graphics are also different. I believe some of them have the word AUTOMATIC in place of CLIMATE CONTROL. Could someone confirm this?

It's definitely possible to have these also made in Celsius, but if I do I'd want the rest of the artwork to be correct as well. I'd need to get the costs of the artwork changes before making a decision. If someone could send a high quality color scan of a Celsius bezel, I could look into it.

Thanks again