Painted guage surround

I'm in the process of resurrecting my XJ that I rolled on the road.

I found Go Jeep's write-up on painting the guage surround,
and it is very easy and cheap.

Here's what I did, cost $3.99 for paint.

Removed dash panel and guage cluster.
The hardest part was reaching the speedo to remove the cable,
just squeeze the connection.
Unclip the two large wiring connectors by squeezing
the top and bottom. (no photo's).

Unscrew the four brass screws and remove
the trip odometer button (slides right off).



Remove the plexiglass and the guage surround.

Remove the turn signal and high beam "gels"
gently prying up with a razor blade.
It seems there is some small amount of glue here,
but it's easy to pry that off.



I used all purpose paint.
It seemed to run a bit because
I didn't sand the plastic surface.
It turned out all right with several coats of paint.





Reassemble.



The contrast makes the stock guages much easier to see.
I chose orange because I will be using it
as an accent color on the XJ.

Concept;







:skull1:

OOPS, maybe the powers that be can post this in the right "non-technical" forum!

why? looks great.

looks good. i also hated the grey on mine. didnt match my tan interior, but i just went with black

the 'shop looks like its made of lego's though.
and i hope the door handles got lost in the shop, but will make the final product.

"OOPS!" Refers to the rules for this forum about "no photo's".

I didn't read that until after I posted.

Thanks for the positive comments.

the 'no photo' thing has to do with stuff like making a new thread, asking for pics of an xj on 3" lift, on 31"s.
your thread is fine, and everything is better with pics.

mine is duplicolor metalcast blue painted over "bright aluminum" to give it some shine, with the turn signal light filters replaced with 1/16" blue plexiglass.

doesnt really match anything in the interior so i replaced it with another plain unpainted one from the junkyard. i'd like to see a custom guage face set with glowing numbers that retains the stock black face, but i doubt there is enough interest to get one produced.

I like this kind of thing, even though it got the "ricer" rep for a while- I've been staring at two tone gray every day for years- a little paint here and there helps break up the boring. Not so easy to do the gauges on a 97+, but I see some metal overlays on ebay- think they'd work just fine with some primer and paint.

I don't have the patience to mask it off, but I've always thought it might be nice to gloss black the whole surround then flat black the bevels around the guages.

it does look a bit like its made of legos, but it looks good. which one of us didnt play with legos? hell, i made this kick ass rocket ship just the other night!