[Slimsride]

So i tore my dash apart...








WOW, LOTS OF ROOM TO WORK IN HERE.



My living room Dash board




Now there is two reasons for me doing this. One, is to paint all these pieces to match the outside of my car. I'm thinking the Black and silver Motif (i said motif, how GHEY) Will continue into the car. Very CHIC...(bwahhaha, another ghey word)

and reason number two.
is to install a few of these superbright LED's into my vents...and my speaker grills..um and a few other areas....



This pic is of the 10 blue Led switches, the 30 Super Bright LED's and 1500 feet...(yes i bought 1500 feet of wire) That i bought from, a place where i'll do alot of my shopping for LED's and the like from




So what do you guys think? Any suggestions of possible placement of LED's?

[ANTHONYD]

Slimsride,Feb 21 2006, 02:22 AM Wrote:So what do you guys think?  Any suggestions of possible placement of LED's?
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In the garbage?

all kidding aside.

I wouldn't paint your dash. If it ever came to you selling that car in the future....you'd never sell it with a painted dash.

And I've seen some shoddy painted dashboards that look like ass 3 years later.
I personally think it;s more trouble than it's worth.

I would however place led's in the vents and under the seats.\Or maybe somewhere functiional like in the mirror adjustment buttons or somewhere the buttons don;t light up. I'm not too familliar with the 05's but I always wished the mirror adjustment knob on my 02 lit up.

[nass]

you can paint the dash but remember 2 things.

1) don't over do it, the less is more rule applies here. In your case I would only paint the gauge surround and leave the rest alone.

2) I wouldn't paint it the same colour as the car, rather I would paint it an accenting colour. We both have silver cars so I painted the handle and latch surround a dark grey/gun metal colour. I painted one side that gun metal colour and the other side silver like the car and ever agrees including me that the darker colour is far better.


Anthony, even if he does have to paint the dash again in 3 years cause it looks like crap, one can say the same to you and your obsessive cleaning, why bother it's going to get dirty again. It's a labour of love for all of us :P

[NOS2Go4Me]

My vote is NOT to paint the dash, but maybe an accenting colour on the HVAC/radio surround. LEDs in the vents are overdone, but LEDs elsewhere (door handle / interior pulls illuminated at night? etc) could be cool and different.

I gotta try and get a shot of my trunk all lit up... it's completely hidden till you actually look up at the underwide of the rear deck, and it's (fairly) clean to wire.

9 superbright red LEDs replace the crappy and useless peanut bulb in my trunk. Actually, if I had access to single LEDs and if they were bright enough, I'd redo it with components like yours.

Illuminate the little things, maybe change the colour of the door lock / power window switches.

[ANTHONYD]

nass,Feb 21 2006, 09:56 AM Wrote:Anthony, even if he does have to paint the dash again in 3 years cause it looks like crap, one can say the same to you and your obsessive cleaning, why bother it's going to get dirty again. It's a labour of love for all of us :P
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Agree.

However, the main reason I keep my car so clean is so that I can keep an eye on it. It's maintinence more than anything.

[ANTHONYD]

Silver dashboards just don't look good.

[euro_zx5]

Well to match a theme, it looks great. As for that one you posted Anthony, it actually looks decent!

I'd definatly put some led's in the back seat... that's my future plan, run some led pods for teh floor in the back seat and a couple in the trunk, it's ridiculous that there is no light in there at night, the back has no light and the trunk's light is useless with my box.

EDIT: Anthonyd: Well... having done all that in a Cavalier or Sunfire, it looks pretty crappy, but there's not much they can do in that department with those cars anyway... :lol:

[Fingers]

That is going to look like absolute crap. A year from now, you will regret ever doing it. That's my forecast/opinion, and you asked for it.

Have fun.

[euro_zx5]

Fingers,Feb 21 2006, 11:35 AM Wrote:That is going to look like absolute crap.  A year from now, you will regret ever doing it.  That's my forecast/opinion, and you asked for it.

Have fun.
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I think he means to give it an updated ST look, rather than a ricer crappy look. Which I wouldn't regret long term, if it was done right the first time.

[NefCanuck]

ANTHONYD,Feb 21 2006, 09:37 AM Wrote:

Silver dashboards just don't look good.
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I don't have a problem with the silver, it's the 'flame' accent on the dash that screams rice-a-roni to me.

Damnit and it's almost lunchtime too <_<

NefCanuck

[NOS2Go4Me]

That's the 05 dash? Blech. At least, in that case it's "blech".

Pass.

And neither the colour nor the flame accent look good.

[ANTHONYD]

Fingers,Feb 21 2006, 12:35 PM Wrote:That is going to look like absolute crap.  A year from now, you will regret ever doing it.  That's my forecast/opinion, and you asked for it.

Have fun.
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I agree.

[Frost__2001]

NOS2Go4Me,Feb 21 2006, 02:30 PM Wrote:That's the 05 dash? Blech. At least, in that case it's "blech".

Pass.

And neither the colour nor the flame accent look good.
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It's a Chevy Crap~alier dash, and I don't see the problems in painting the dash parts I mean most people have done things like paint their bezels all in one colour, cept in my case where I left a lot of the black left alone round the dials (see pics) and I'm sure that's what he is / was going for / talking about. I'll say this though I'll leav my opinion till I see the final results.

Course these pics are from early last summer just after I did this, so it's changed a bit since then

[NOS2Go4Me]

You see... to me the HVAC surround looks MILES better than the gauge cluster, but that's just me.

[Slimsride]

Thanks for all your inputs guys...i appreciate it. But, i think i wasn't clear on what i was going to do....i'm not paintiing my DASH per say, but the bezels and stuff instead. Good lord, i couldn't see myself pulling my hair out, trying to figure out how to remove the whole dash, then cursing trying to put it back in. Cuz you and i both know that paint a dash inside the car is ..um....GHETTO...and just plain stupid.

So, In short, it's pretty much just the bezels and stuff that i wanted to paint.

I can't remember who said it sorry (to lazy to scroll back up), I realize that LED's in the vents are over done....and I somewhat agree with that...however i have only seen LED's in the 2 center vents...i'm going for all of them here.

Also, i'm going for the Speaker Grills....and now that you mention it...door handles would be kinda cool too...thanks for that little idea. The problem i'm having here is , should i wire LED's into the door panels...i have to remember that the door panel may have to come off at one time or another, so i have to wire it, so i don't pull the LED outta it's place, or snap the wire, or something like that when i remove the panel.

So much to do...so little time and patience. LOL.

OH and another thing..i wanted to paint the bezel around the instrument cluster...now with that said, i have indiglo gauges coming in from SPEEDHUT, and they are white faced....so painting the bezel silver with white gauges would look pretty slick no????

thanks for your inputs fella's

[NOS2Go4Me]

If I had the time and inclination, I'd have LEDs illuninating the door handles when the headlights/parking lights were on. That'd be pimp.

All of the vents? Not bad, at least there's continuity in the theme.

If the gauges are painted/coloured different than stock, I'd pass on the painting of the bezel. flipping from light --> dark --> light could get to be too busy, and you'd just have to replace it with another. That's NOT something I'd look forward to.

Of course that's my 2 cents, adjusted for network overhead.

[nass]

ANTHONYD,Feb 21 2006, 02:27 PM Wrote:

nass,Feb 21 2006, 09:56 AM Wrote:Anthony, even if he does have to paint the dash again in 3 years cause it looks like crap, one can say the same to you and your obsessive cleaning, why bother it's going to get dirty again. It's a labour of love for all of us :P
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Agree.

However, the main reason I keep my car so clean is so that I can keep an eye on it. It's maintinence more than anything.
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that's right you're killing two birds with one stone. If you're always cleanign you'll spot a problem before it gets you.

[NoiSeeVT]

Get them done professionally, mine was done colormatched to the car, it would have cost the same to do it myself with all the stuff used. Especailly the plastic bonding agent and the clearcoating.


David

[Slimsride]

Well here we go, the on going project. Everything worked great, hell i even got to Solder, for the first time in my life...and I'm pretty good at it. LOL.

I did encounter a slight problem though. The plastic in the vent is quite thick, and as i had installed the LED from the bottom of the vent, the LED itself doesn't quite go all the way through. Now there is nothing wrong with that, the only problem is you dont' get ALL the light from the LED. Maybe a 1/3 of the bulb is in the vent...so your only getting 1/3 the light. Tonight i'm going to make the holes a bit bigger, and push the whole bulb into the vent. Downside to this is, you'll see the LED itself. However, It'll be a whole lot brighter than what it is now.









"Got Switches"

[euro_zx5]

Slimsride,Feb 22 2006, 01:41 PM Wrote:Well here we go, the on going project.  Everything worked great, hell i even got to Solder, for the first time in my life...and I'm pretty good at it. LOL. 

I did encounter a slight problem though.  The plastic in the vent is quite thick, and as i had installed the LED from the bottom of the vent, the LED itself doesn't quite go all the way through.  Now there is nothing wrong with that, the only problem is you dont' get ALL the light from the LED.  Maybe a 1/3 of the bulb is in the vent...so your only getting 1/3 the light.  Tonight i'm going to make the holes a bit bigger, and push the whole bulb into the vent.  Downside to this is, you'll see the LED itself.  However, It'll be a whole lot brighter than what it is now.

"Got Switches"


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Umm...... whoa. If I were you i'd have spent some nice coint and put a digital controller with a single knobto adjust intentisy as well.