Week #148

I know I had told myself that I was going to live with the last effort of painting the dash but I just couldn't leave well enough alone. It had been several months since "Mopaint" had told me they didn't have the "suede" additive so I thought I'd waste a quarter and call them for an update. Well... it turns out all ingredients were back in stock and they could give me the exact factory formulation for my dash. I couldn't say no. This meant painting the small parts like for the fourth time... and scuffing and repainting the dash frame a second time. It would be worth it knowing I had paint as close as humanly possible to being correct. It took a good Saturday to get everything refinished but it looked great and I was real happy with it.

A few weeks later I finally got back my instrument cluster and dash plastic parts from Performance Car Graphics and man did they look perfect. I couldn't wait to assemble the dash now that all the painting and waiting for parts was over. Everthing went together fairly easy. I had bought an interior screw set way back and those new screws against the new parts was a beautiful thing. The dash pad was an eBay item from 2 years ago. It is basically a damage free, correct B7 blue original pad. After all the crap involved in coming up with correct blues, I am glad I have it. I spent an evening cleaning it with some fairly high powered cleaner and a tooth brush. The results were nothing short of spectacular. The blue color really glowed after cleaning and a little Armor All.

The glove box lock is a problem. I have several locks (mounted in doors) but no keys. The factory service manual has a simple procedure for removing the lock from the door but you need the key to do it. My plan is to have a locksmith make a key for the lock I want to use, I'll then remove the lock from the the old door... THEN have the locksmith match the lock itself to the key I have for the trunk. The plan sounds too easy, there must be something wrong it.

I didn't get to the wiring until the next weekend. It took a lot longer than I tought to sort everything out and match plugs up with sockets. I eventually had a place for every plug... or at least had them labled for what ever was missing... like the key-in buzzer relay and similar.