# A little dash painting (pics)



## cls12vg30 (Oct 21, 2003)

I finally did a little painting of a couple interior pieces, it's taken awhile to get the paint and try to find days warm enough to paint. 
As you may know, I've gone with an orange-highlight them in my black interior, inspired by the orange guages. So of course the shifter knob is orange billet aluminum, the shifter boot and steering wheel cover are both black with orange stitching. I wanted to do some dash painting, but I didn't want regular orange. To get a metallic orange look, I used regular silver krylon, and then over that I used this:








It's transparent orange paint meant for painting light bulbs.
Here are the results so far, I apologize for the night-time shot:








You can't really tell from the pic, but the pieces really have a metallic shimmer to them, I'm really pleased with the outcome. Here you can see the lighter, and also the illuminated orange fan-control toggle switch I put in and the foglight pull switch, which is original. 








You can also see my engine fan indicator light, the orange LED on the right edge of the clock trim panel. While the switch lights up whenever you turn it on, that LED is wired directly into the fan circuits, so it confirms that the fans are actually running, whether the switch is on or not. The clock doesn't light up because it's out of a MkI (84-86) 200SX and the wiring doesn't quite match up. My original dash clock quit, I'm working on getting a working MkII (87-88) dash clock.
The switches are actually lit, in that last pic, but the flash dulls them a bit. Here's a shot with no flash of the switches:








And another no-flash pic of the whole dash with everything turned on:








That little green "19" on the right is the CB. I wish it had an orange readout, but oh well.
People comment about all the stuff that is lit up on my dash at night. I tell them it's an '80s car so it has a lot of gadgets. None of those lights are extraneous either, they all actually do something. (slight nudge to neon-loving ricers)
And yes I'm hoping for a better digicam for Christmas. 
So far I've only painted the clock trim and the shifter trim pieces and the lighter. I'll probably do a couple more, and the lighter needs to be redone, but at $30 for a rather small can this transparent orange paint needs to be conserved. I'm thinking of doing the trim panel around the stereo and also the front surfaces of the ashtray, and that will probably be it. I want it to be kind of subtle, after all.


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## nismoprincess (Sep 27, 2002)

cool :fluffy:
take some close-ups of it


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## dry (Oct 21, 2002)

I really like it, it came out good.... I must say that is an origional way to paint things, I cant wait to see the daytime shots.


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## xt_out (Jun 23, 2003)

:thumbup: cool! and a cb *gasp*. paint lookin good so far.


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## Exalta (Jan 21, 2003)

lookin good man! :thumbup: nice ideas there. One question though, How's the durability of the paint?


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## cls12vg30 (Oct 21, 2003)

Well the durability remains to be seen. The orange paint is meant for painting directly on light bulbs, so it should be made for high temps. I'm hoping it holds up.


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