Michigan winters are long and cold.  Its downtime for me because I dont have heat in my garage besides a torpedo heater that gases me out after a few minutes.  The basement took over for the garage as I moved indoors.  I took the dash apart and sent the pad to JustDashes.  The pad was cracked and rotted, and a nice original one may crack as soon as you put it in so I made to decision to have mine recovered.  I bought a new dash plate because the old one was broke from the HVC to the ash tray, had caught fire around the ignition, and had cheap gages cut into the speaker hole.

One good thing was all the knobs and the chrome speedometer bezel was spotless, not a pit on them.  They cleaned up real nice.  After I stripped the old paint off the new dash plate, I primed it and painted it silver again.  I then taped it off to put the black accent back on it.  I bought a new speaker grill off of eBay, along with the 442 emblem that mounts to it.  I repainted the gage needles, restored the heater/vent control and waited for the dash to come back.   It did 12 weeks later and I reassembled the unit.

I took the seats and the door panels to the upholstery shop and had them recovered.  The pieces came from the parts car because the 442 was missing them. The new panels are puffier than the tight fitting originals, I will have to live with it I guess.  I was seriously tight on room to store parts at this point so the seats were stored in my parents basement.

This is the original steering column after I restored it. I had to replace the inner steel shaft because it was boogered up on the splined end. The wheel was also restored by yours truely using the POR 15 kit.  A new turn signal switch was also installed as a preventative repair.

The car came with a mint 65 Chevelle automatic console with shifter.  It was the big chrome piece that you usually see pitted up real bad. This one was perfect. I sold it for 375.00 on eBay.  I then bought a super nice automatic 442 console for 400.00, thinking I had an automatic car. After realizing what I had, I traded it for a 4 speed console that was also mint.  So after all that buying, selling, and trading, I got an awesome 4 speed console for an out of pocket cost of 25 bucks. I sprayed the plastic with SEM black and the plates with Plasti-Kote steel wheels so it matches the dash face.  Silver was used only on 65s, the other years were painted black. Wife says the first thing that gets fixed after the car is done is the basement tile, linoleum is no match for paint stripper.

One of the few pieces to come from the Cutlass parts car was the heater box.  I almost let it go with the car but pulled it out at the last second. The 442 box had an extra hole drilled in it so it was easier to use the box out of the Cutlass.  These boxes were not painted black, they were done in a dark charcoal that was textured. The best I could find was a Rustoleum paint called dark bronze under the Hammered line of paints.  It came out a close match, not bronze at all, and had the mottled texture like the original.

After I got the seats back, the interior was done.  I also restored the vent glass, which is kinda a part of the interior.  I put in new seals and cleaned the stainless and chrome pieces.  Once again these parts were spotless, with no pits.  I love working on a car from a warm climate.