Silver gauge trim

One of the PO of my car attempted to desticky the main gauge surround in the car without disassembling it. In the process they tainted the silver trim rings on the gauges and they had a yellowish tint

I have taken apart the cluster and destickied and coated the surround properly and have the silver rings separated and ready to paint

My question is has anyone done this and if so what color paint did you use? I'm not sure whether it should be a grey or silver.

Thank you

 

Dan I'm not sure on a 348 but on a 355 removing the instrument cowl involves removing two screws at the bottom right and left of the cowl.

At that point you rotate the assembly towards the drivers window and carefully unplug all the connections

You now have it on your work top. Removing the gauges is straight forward in removing the visible screws that hold the gauges to the surround assembly.

Once you have the gauges off the silver rings just separate from them.

 

Jerry they just snap in and out. The conventional tabs on the side that break off if you aren't prudent. Small spackle tool worked for me. Carefully. By taking off the instrument pod as above you can get at the back of center and left ones for pushing purposes. It helps.

 

Finished up the project and it it came out great. I used this paint for the gauge trim if anyone else needs to do this in the future. It doesn't say the color or description on the can but the top is a flat silver color which is the only designation.

The surround is the SEM trim product.

 

I removed my center vent and here are some pics and issues with it. Note that there are two larger clips on the top and three smaller ones on the bottom. None on the sides.

I used a dental spatula that I have as shown.

I am going to send this to SNM as I dont have the decals and he did the side ones so they will match as well.

The thing that threw me a bit also was the led. IF you have seen this then you know how it is affixed, if you haven't it sits in a space that is formed by the front and back of the vent unit that appears to be glued together. I posted a pic of the separation of them wedged open with a screw. I pried all around trying to separate the pieces and decided I was going to break it as the glue was not allowing it to come apart. By prying open the one side that was apart i was able to open the space for the led enough to get it out but if yours does not come apart you may have to leave the led in and somehow mask around it for cleaning and painting.
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There are no side tabs as I said.

The led has a coupling about 4" back so you can remove the vent with the led installed. I was speaking of removIng the led from the housing as I did so that it won't get mucked up from destickying or painting.

In my case I used that flat spatula on the bottom and lifted the bottom which disengaged the top and it came out. On the upper right the corner was stuck under the leather and had to be finessed to release it. I am sure that every situation will be a bit different, kind of like removing a third molar...oh never mind.

The back side of the vent just sits in its supply plenum. No physical attachment. It just lifts out
Play around with something like the flat thing I used and see what your vent and leather will allow. Let me know if I can detail further.

 

There is a picture I posted above of the actual vent that showx where the crabs are

As I said twice and is visible in the pic above, there are no sidd tabs.

As I said and the pic above shows, ther are two tabs on the top and three small ones on the bottom