Cleaning gauges cover?

crzyhrse99

Active Member
Mar 30, 2005
259
3
28
Kansas
Just wondering if any of you guys have had experience cleaning the plastic lens overlay that protects youre gauges. Mine has spots and swirls from various protectants that I have used on the interiour over the last several years and it has allways bugged me.

I had the time this evening to take off the headlight knob and the shroud so that I can get to try to clean up this area of the stang. So my question is what should I use to try to clean with:

This is what I was thinking but ran out of time because I was short of daylight

Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
Straight alchohol
Meg. Plastic x
Rubbing Compound

Has anyone done this before, I have tried every type of glass cleaner (which I know its not glass) and lots of other household cleaners but nothing works:mad:
 
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I had mine off when I did my overlays and I tried to clean both sides of the plastic. It was better but there were still some small scratches and spots on it. Maybe the rubbing compound will work, but I've never tried it.
 
Mine got some type of film on it over the years and made it a pain to look through. I tried a lot of different things and nothing worked. I didn't try PlasticX, but I'm pretty sure I tried some type of lens restorer. I ended up just buying another lens on eBay.
 
I got a lens off of ebay. They said it was 94-04 but I have a feeling it was made for the 99-04. On my 94 cluster, its trip reset is flush with everything on the backside. The one I received had plastic holding the reset into the lens by about a quarter inch. Since it was different, it put pressure on the reset inside the gauges and wouldn't let it accumulate miles....I took a hack saw blade and cut the plastic off the back side so it could return to flush with the black plastic. It worked and allowed the trip to turn again. The cut might have been a little rough but it was on the backside of the black trim and can't be seen from the front.