consoul restoration

[CFMopar]

How do you guys go bout restoring center consuls? Mines faded and Would like to bring out the shine. Also with the fake wood aswell.

[Judhudson]

You may want to try Armor All, Turtle Wax or just a basic cleaner to wipe your console to see if it will bring out the shine.  I cleaned some plastic parts with some Armor All Tire Shine and it looked alright. Of course, I don't think it was the right thing to use, but it worked for me

If that doesn't work, you can always resort to dying it, that will give it a new look and shine too. 

For your wooden insert, I used some toothpicks, Q-Tips, water and a cloth.  The toothpicks were used to clean out the dirt in the hard to reach areas and the Q-Tips were to wipe it out.  Then I went over it with a cloth.  However, you can always buy a new wooden insert from Year One - http://yearone.com/serverfiles/fbshopmain2.asp?cat=1 for about 20 bucks.  Sounds like a great deal to me, I may get one in the future.

Hope this gets you in the right direction!

[CFMopar]

anything specifc to do in the dying process?

[Ghoste]

You know, I'm not too sure if this would work, but...
Meguiars have recently started marketing a line of guitar care cleaners, polishes, and so on.  Anway, one of these products is called Guitar Amp Restoaration something or other.  I tried it on a very old, tired looking, dull, stained, mildewed amp at my place and it brought it to a like new shine.  I don't know how this miracle juice would work on plastic but I have an old E-body console laying around here so maybe I'll try it and let you know what happens.

[CFMopar]

Ya keep me posted.

[Ghoste]

I gave it a try.  It worked very well but it didn't perform the miracle it did with the old guitar amplifier.  Maybe the hard plastic doesn't resond as well as the softer tolex vinyl.  Maybe the old Cuda console had a harder more baked on grime.  In any case, it did work and it worked well enough that I would give it a try.  It may need some elbow grease is all.
It's just Meguiars vinyl cleaner and conditioner and I'm sure the "special" guitar formula is exactly the same as their cheaper regular one.
I can post a pic of the console if you want.  I only tested it on a small portion so there is kind of a before and after but I think you can imagine the results pretty well.

[CFMopar]

Sure a pic would be good.

[Ghoste]

Okay.  First I'm going to try some regular automotive Meguiars plastic cleaner on a portion and see how that works.  Then I have to find where my wife hid her digital camera as I'm still a film and carburetor kind of guy.

[bull]

Consoles are molded plastic so I don't think there's any shine to bring out of it once they fade out. I think your best bet is to clean it up real good with soap and water and shoot it with some SEM dye.

[Ghoste]

For that matter, there probably wasn't a lot of "shine" even when they were new.