Gage Rings

[Darkshark]

Hello, good people. New (to me) '98 Boxter owner here. I'm looking to dress up my interior a little. Tastefully I hope. I like the classic look of silver gage rings but it seems wrong to stick anything to the dash with double sided tape like most of the gage ring offerings I've seen. I'm thinking about poping the gage rings off and airbrushing them aluminum color. Anyone here ever do that or know proceedure for removing the gage rings? Or is painting the plastic too sketchy?

Sid

[Tool Pants]

The black plastic trim rings are glued to the clear plastic lense, and the trim ring is glued to the face of the instrument cluster. If you are very lucky you can remove the ring and the lense, and paint the ring. But it is hard to break the glue bond without damaging the plastic. And if you damage something there are no replacement parts.

I think a better alternative would be to remove the cluster, and then remove the face from the cluster. Then you can mask off the rings and paint them with an air brush.

[jinijazz]

I did exactly what Tool Pants said, but one word of caution;

Masking is not very straight forward since it's circular. Keep the spray off the clear plastic lense, it's very hard to clean up.

BTW, I prefer chrome ring as in 550SE...

Anyone knows where I can purchase it other than stealer?

[Darkshark]

Toolpants - Glued in?! :eek: Yikes! Hmmmm, stick is sounding better. Is there a aluminum OEM part I can just replace them with?

jinijazz - I dig the chrome as well. I've seen aftermarket stick on chrome rings somewhere. Maybe Pelican Parts? I thought that aluminum would tie in better though with the pseudo aluminum looking shift knob and e brake lever my car has from the factory.

[mrmickeymouse]

E Bay from another stealer $129.00 for extruded aluminum, allot of money for a little bit of coke can.

Scott

[Tool Pants]

If only I was 12 again, buliding plastic models of cars and cycles and had the same eyesight, I could do it with $2 of Testors paint. Silver, chrome, whatever color. I could even do it with a brush and paint that was thinned out.

Pulling the face off would make it easy since you do not have to deal with the weight of the cluster. Masking off the clear plastic lenses is the trick.