Old Man Winter Slows Things Down....

It's been a while since my last post.  At first, it was the holidays and lack of time to do work. Then, it was just plain cold in the garage and no fun.  So, I took a break.  But, I've been getting itchy to do some work, so I found some easy stuff to do.  This was a circle back around exercise and finish something that I had started several years ago: dashboard trim restoration.

As a reminder, here is what the entire dashboard looked like when I got the truck:

Ahhh, the flaking gray primer, the ashtray crammed full of primer gray pencils and cigarette butts and the rust.  Warms the heart!  This stuff was some of the first stuff that I removed and attempted to remove the rust from.  Here is the dash with the stuff gone:

Here's a nice close up of the glove box door after removal but before cleaning:

Here's a shot of the inside of that same door before cleaning and rust removal:

I did some work at cleaning up these pieces, as well as the trim that went around the speaker grill, the speaker grill itself, the ashtray and the lock.  For whatever reason, I never finished this work and the pieces sat in the basement for 5 years.  Last fall, I decided that I would start the circle back process and got going on finishing up what I had started.  I started with the ashtray and when that was done, moved on to the grill trim pieces.  Then winter hit and that effort stalled. Fast forward to this past weekend and I got the glove box door and speaker grill out and set to work.  Here is a shot of the grill (front and back) before cleaning:

You can clearly see that after getting the thick crud off, I set it aside and it got surface rust sitting in the basement all that time.  Here it is (front and back) after getting it completely clean:

You can clearly see pitting in the metal on the backside of the grill, but it isn't severe.  Although it is severe enough that you wouldn't want to try to polish it out and clear coat it.  So instead, I primed it to ready it for paint.  Here it is:

And now for the money shots, here it is with paint:

I didn't take any shots of the glove box door in the prep stages, but here is the front after paint:

And now the back of the glove box door with the restored hinges attached:

I still need to order the letter decals for the speaker grill trim pieces.  When I do, I'll put them on and take a pic with all of the pieces lines up as they will be when installed in the truck.  I won't do that until I do some corrosion control on the dash and put a little paint down there, too.  I'm not doing a full restoration of the cab or dash, just enough to make it enjoyable while driving in it.

That's all for now.  It's still cold out there.  But spring is right around the corner and I have lots planned!  Stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel.  For those old enough to remember.