Well, I made the decision to take on repainting my dash and inserts rather than spend a lot of money I don’t have and take who knows how long.
Since this is not a show car I hope the purists for stock everything will understand. It was a hard decision as I am trying to keep everything stock except the paint color which I am changing. I did this for about $20 and a lot of time! I bought a rattle can of Rust-Oleum Hammered Metal for the main color and a Krylon Metallic for the chrome look trim. I had a can of black already and used a little of that too. I also used a lot of tape.
After taking it all apart, I polished all the lenses,
lightly sanded the edges of the gauge bezels to expose a rim of bare metal and kept the rest original black. I had to replace one of my toggle switches that had a broken wire connection and ordered new tips.
Since I feel like the woodgrain look of the XR7 is such a big part of the cars identity I still prefer the wood. But I really do like your paint job. If I was doing a restomod I’d really consider that look.
I like it. I’m generally a purist, but custom work is fine as long as it’s tasteful. I’m surprised you didn’t repaint the orange stripe on the speedometer. The contrast would look good I think.
I think that looks great and jives with the sophisticated XR7 concept. I especially like the silver rings around the gauges- nice touch. How did you do that?
It was actually something that happened by accident. I started to sand one of my rings as I don’t own a bead or sand blaster.
While I was sanding it I noticed I liked the way the metal looked under the black paint so I very lightly kept the sand paper (200 grit) just on the top edge, keeping some black paint still on the sides. Decided that with the look I was going for it would work fine so did the rest of them that way.
I believe that it was Andrew, member Blitz on here, who showed how he painted the orange back on his speedometer in his Snowball thread in the Project section of this forum.
I take back what I said, I guess it is possible. However the lines on the xr7 speedometer don’t seem to be raised from the surface like on the standard speedometer and so I still think it would be very hard to get sharp, clean lines. Possibly, someone with a vinyl printer/cutter could scan an image of the gauge face and make a friskit (fancy stencil) for just the orange parts. That’s the way I’d do it.
It was a hard decision as I am trying to keep everything stock except the paint color which I am changing. I did this for about $20 and a lot of time! I bought a rattle can of Rust-Oleum Hammered Metal for the main color and a Krylon Metallic for the chrome look trim. I had a can of black already and used a little of that too. I also used a lot of tape.
