69 Camaro Dash Bezel Repair & Paint

[Thomas]

I need to replace the dash bezel on my 69 Stock Eliminator, as the original one has been butchered and I am working on some cosmetics.

I have the option of two bezels, which I have lying around in my basement.
One needs one of the steering column cover mounting tabs repaired.
The other one has a major crack, but is seals up perfectly when aligned.
Both are green and need to be painted.
For reasons, which are too long to post here, my preference is to use the one with the crack.

I have tried to find a nice clean used black bezel, but they were either in poor shape or the price was more than a new one.
Also a new one would not match the 51 year old patina of the interior.

So I have two questions.

Do any of you have any experience with Plastex repair kits, both for replacing a tab and fixing a crack? And, if so, what did you think?

As both will need to be painted black to use in the car, what paint did you use, if you did a colour change on yours?

Thank you in advance.

[NorCam]

I have used plastic weld to repair an original and have repainted one using SEM flexible paint for plastics but first giving it a real good cleaning and prepping it with SEM adhesion promoter. It's a lot of work and in the end, you often have to redo the silver around the feature holes. If you're installing a survivor interior then saving an original is likely worth it, but if you plan to restore and install a new interior and a new dash pad, then you have other options.

The dash surround in my current car had two broken tabs and the radio holes were cut so this time I chose to try the repro surround from HBC. Aside from having to drill and tap the wiper studs for correct sized screws, I was pleasantly surprised with how well it fit. Definitely a better use of my time to start with a nice bezel and then swap the original gauges over. FWIW, here's how it looks when done and said. Some people despise reproduction parts, but there's also a time when hard old plastic becomes brittle and I'm just sharing this to show how it looks when a dash is swapped out. IMO, most would have no idea when seeing the car finished up. I can tell you it sure looks clean and isn't out of place in this car?

[big gear head]

It's made of ABS plastic. I've used common ABS pipe cement several times to repair these. It holds well. Also, ABS dissolves in acetone. You can use it to bond ABS. I've used acetone to bond ABS parts that I made on a 3D printer. As always, experiment on scrap parts first.

If you have one that is completely scrap you could cut small pieces off of it to bond to the back side of the crack to make it stronger.

[L79guy]

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