Rallye Dash Resto

Hi y'all,

I talked with Mike Ross over at B/E&A parts about a dash pad for my cuda. He no longer stocks dash pads forvour A bodys. Once he depletes what he has of these he said he wont reorder. He is out of the 69/76 pads in black. He may still have some of the other colors.

That is not the reason for my post. We talked about the instrument cluster bezels and the glove box bezels for the rallye dashes. What he explained to me was that the factory back then used what was called vacuum metalizing. This process is what we see the aftermath of when we look at the faded , jacked up chrome and plastic peaking thru in spots.

He said plastic rechromers use this process which essentially gives you the same issues as the original process. Heaven forbid you get windex on it, as the ammonia will eat the metalizing off the part.

Mike said his dash bezels are actually chromed plastic. My 2007 mustang GT has chromed plastic bezels, and chromed plastics are used successfully on exterior parts like pickup truck grilles etc and can handle the elements well. So it should last a lifetime on one of these bezels.

I decided to pony up the bucks and get a new bezel kit with the glove box door piece for 2 reasons. First my plastic is so brittle, and dryrotted its not worth fixing, and second i know chromed plastic tends to hold up better than vacuum metalizing does.

I will prob still have Gcar do the gage centers with vac metalizing as its a couple small parts, and is still way cheaper than a set of new lenses.

Hope this helps
Matt