1973 RS/LT/Z28 4spd - Gold/Parchment Restoration

[BCreekDave]

Nice work for sure. If you can fix the stock lens its the way to go. I've heard, no experience, that the OER lens are bad. I used a headlight restore polish and it worked well as a followup to the sanding.
What are you going to do to protect the polished aluminum? Shoot with clear coat and polish?
Did you rechrome the gauge bezel or silver it?

[firstgenaddict]

Originally Posted by BCreekDave

Did you rechrome the gauge bezel or silver it?

The originals are vacuum metalized... like a plastic potato chip bag then it is blacked out.
I use silver leaf put the glue down then burnish silver leaf onto the surface.

I couldn't get the wood grain off without fear of damaging it or I may have sent it out to have it metalized.



As an aside the original 69 tire pressure decals are not on foil or on paper they are on vacuum metalized paper - which appears to be wet strength metalized paper. It was originally developed for beer bottle labels thus it has wet strength in the paper.

[BCreekDave]

The wood grain is a pain to remove. Every inch of it has adhesive. Took me about 4 hours with a real thin blade. I then sent the thing out to be metallized and then had to mask off the edges with petroleum jelly. Then spray black. Got about 20 hours in the thing. I did this on mine about 20 years ago and it is holding up well.