Hey everyone, I ran into a problem I removed my dash (guage cover, Brushed aluminum style) and cleaned it for a car show... BIG mistake all the chrome came off and some of the brushed aluminum too!! Problem is the show is next weekend 02/23/06 Can anybody give me some ideas on how to redo this or get a replacement in less than a week! AAAAAGH!! HELP!!
That fortuna guy has some. http://www.fortunamustang.com/ If you get some of them, please let us know if they fit well...I am in the market also, just havent heard anything about him, so i havent gotten any for myself.
I am assuming you have the early style dash bezel with the chromed back. You could actually strip all the chrome off, and then respray it semi-flat black, and then you'd have the later style dash. But I'm guessing you have the chromed passengers side as well. The only thing I can suggest is to try to find a replacement on ebay. It's VERY hard to find a good chromed back dash. I actually had the one in my 76 rechromed, because I could not find a decent one. As mentioned, Dave Fortuna sells the aluminum inserts. I used that on my dash. The fit and quality are top notch. However if you want to receive it this year, well that's another story...
If you do a search, you might get a more accurate answer, as I posted about it before. But I think it was something like 6-8 months before I got all the dash parts.
I got in touch with Dave at Fortuna, he has the non A/C inserts in stock and said that he can overnight it. I am painting the backing that used to be chrome, Black so the guage bezels will be black with the aluminum insert. It should look ok. Sal how did you stick the insert on? 3M Adhesive Spray?
If he doesn't come through in time, I would just paint it as a temporary measure...after all, that's what Ford did for all but the earliest CBII's. Strip the whole thing and paint it with a good satin or egg-shell black. Then mask off the bezels and paint it with a chrome silver spray. I would think that most silver spray paints would have too large of a particle size to pass for aluminum. The "chrome" spray paints have a really small particle size, and look a lot more like polished aluminum to me. You might even experiment (on a seperate surface) with dragging a brush through the still wet paint to simulate the brushed aluminum look. The odd thing about this is that Ford used a thin steel(!) insert on the dash of the Ghia models with the Sport package. This is the one with the dark blue engine-turned finish. I have no idea what look they were going for since every engine-turned dash I've ever seen was natural aluminum color, and "blueing" as used on firearms can't be used on aluminum... Mine was coming off, so I pulled it the rest of the way to clean and reattach. It appeared to have been attached originally with contact cement. Plus it has tabs that were fitted through slots in the dash and then bent over.
Fortuna came through grand style, he overnighted them, and I used gorilla snot (3M weathstrip adhesive) to mount the new bezels in place. The fit and finish is A1 top notch! The car took 3rd place in it's Class which was ALL 70-79 hardtop cars. Thanks Dave!
Congratulations on your win. I have the Fortuna things as well, and used contact cement to mount them, and they look great.
