Here's a pic of the original heater control bezel.



This was my first time trying to refinish a part like this. It was accually pretty fun to do. It took four different paint steps to get it done. I think it turned out nice for being my first time doing it.

After cleaning off all the original paint, I sprayed the inner rectangle area with SEM Trim Black paint. Once that was dry, I masked off the inner section and sprayed the bezel with VHT Wrinkle Paint. Before spraying that paint, I sprayed a test sample because I'd never used the wrinkle paint before. The test turned out good so I went ahead with spraying the bezel. I sprayed it on a hot and sunny day and left the part in the sun for a couple hours. The heat made the wrinkles tighter and it matches what was originally there very closely. I let that paint dry for two weeks before continuing. The next step was to mask off the entire bezel except for the raised rectangle around the controls. I sprayed two light coats of chrome paint onto the rectangle. The chrome paint isn't very chromey(is that a word?) but it looks a little better then a silver paint pen I think. Finally, I used a white paint pen to redo the letters. After going over them once, they still looked dirty. It took another going over to get the white looking crisp.

The finish looks very rough in the picture but it is accually very fine in reality.


Here is a pic of the entire part. It's a little blotchy but you have to spray the wrinkle paint very heavily to get it to wrinkle. It looks better without the flash. The speaker fader knob and bezel are NOS parts my dad bought 20 years ago.


I redid the AM radio face plate the same way. I sprayed it with SEM Trim Black and sprayed the chrome paint on the raised rectangle area.