Don's 69 Charger Rust Belt restoration

[mopar4don]

don would that camo black work on the dash   what are you going to use for rivets copper ones or steel   I am in awe of the things you restore on that car it will look better than  a new one from the factory

Hey old gold69, thanks for the compliments, but there are many who went before me sharing there restorations. I am just passing it on, trying to keep up with them.

My dash is saddle tan so I cant say if it would match or not. Maybe look at other restoration threads and see what they used.
I would suggest looking through birdsandbees thread. I posted his link earlier.

I used gold colored aluminum rivets from McMaster-Carr item #94439A270
Product Detail
Mil. Spec. Aluminum Low-Profile Domed Head Rivets, Solid, 3/32" Diameter, for 0.141" Maximum Material Thickness


      

[mopar4don]

I painted the headliner bows and headlight vacuum canister

[mopar4don]

The switches and chrome knobs were disassembled, cleaned and tested.

[mopar4don]

Here is a pic of the dimmer switch

Because the spring was binding I wanted someone to rebuild it that had more experience. I found this guy on ebay. All he does is rebuild switches so I sent it to him. Here is a link to his ebay store
https://www.ebay.com/str/devinism

[mopar4don]

Then I applied the decals to the gauge faces following the instructions from Premium Dash Decals. They were not my 1st choice but performance car graphics were out of stock and they were not sure when they would have more. It all worked out, as I am extremely happy with there decals!

[mopar4don]

I installed the odometer decals as per the instructions

[mopar4don]

I found a video that showed how to reset the odometer to zero's
This video is for a mustang, but the odometer mechanism is identical
and worked perfectly for my odometer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87kZQkKGSw8

[CDN72SE]

 

[hemi68charger]

I installed the odometer decals as per the instructions

Looking nice Don... How did the decal lay?

[mopar4don]

I installed the odometer decals as per the instructions

Looking nice Don... How did the decal lay?

ALL of the decals layed very nicely. They really have high quality decals. (made by 3M)
What was nice is there was no liquid used to float the decal into position, and then squeegee out the air bubbles.
There decals have a Repositionable Adhesive which means you can lay them down and move them if you don't like the position. The adhesive wont activate until you apply pressure. What else was cool about them is they have micro channels to let the air escape. So you get NO air bubbles!

Go to there Tech page and read all about it.
I HIGHLY recommend them!

https://premiumdashdecals.com/support/

[mopar4don]

I had a circuit board pin that was broke, and after a lot of researching how to fix them, I ended up getting it turned on a lathe and running a 1-64 screw thru the back of the board to hold the pin. In this pic you can see the pin that I replaced (on the left) It looks a little longer in the pic but it is not.

[mopar4don]

In my research I found a thread where a guy had done a similar repair and almost caught his charger on fire. Turned out that the circuit board was grounding out on the housing. Of course this freaked me out a bit! 
After checking it out I found that there is a channel in the housing that is right behind the pins. This channel should clear any contact, but because I had modified the board with my pin repair (I had the head of a tiny screw protruding on the back side) I decided to add a little more protection so I applied some electrical insulating coating which is kinda like liquid electrical tape.

[mopar4don]

Here I assembled all of the switches and gauges back in the housing except for the clock

[mopar4don]

I got the bezels painted and "chromed" with the Molotow chrome pen.
I know it's not the best, but for what it cost to re-chrome, I'll try the pens!

[mopar4don]

So I had just had to see how it looked with the freshly painted bezel on.
I am impressed. Now to get the clock rebuilt.

[mopar4don]

So the original finish of the clock looked pretty good. But since I restored all of other gauges I did not want any differences so I got the clock decals.
The 1st step with restoring the clock is to remove the clock hands and second hand.

[mopar4don]

Then I removed the outer clock bezel ring

[mopar4don]

There is this little black foam pad (clock stem gasket) that fell apart after I removed it. I ended up making one, But if I would have know I would have ordered one with my decal kit from Premium Dash Decals

[mopar4don]

And if anyone knows were to buy that small chrome nut on the end of the time adjust shaft, (IN THE PIC ABOVE) let me know as I misplaced mine!

[mopar4don]

Then I removed the inner clock face and got ready to remove the internals
I purchased the DIY quartz conversion kit from Instrument Services (S-3015)

[mopar4don]

And as per there video instructions I disassembled

[mopar4don]

and assembled there quartz movement into my housing. Here you can see the outer clock face (with its new decal) is back on the housing. And you see the blue foam gasket I made. Now don't judge me because I did trim it up better than in this pic.
The foam gasket is not seen as the outer clock face covers it

[mopar4don]

Final assembly done

[mopar4don]

Hmmm now that I am looking at the pics, I can see that blue foam gasket

AHH   

O well I will have to look at it in final assembly to see if I need to fix it

My grandson approves!

[Bronzedodge]

Dip it in some Rit black dye.