What's the one piece on your car you spend the most time looking at? If your using your car for what it is designed for-driving-the instrument cluster is the correct answer. When our beloved Mopars came from the factory, everything was new. The sheetmetal, interior cloth, suspension parts, you name it, nothing was used or neglected . . . until we got hold of them. We slid in and out on the seats, when the dash got dusty we simply wiped it off, and the instrument cluster got mistreated. We know what you're thinking, how can you mistreat an instrument cluster? Even though now we know better, when our cars were new, we cleaned the gauge faces with anything we could get our hands on. That led to a yellow discoloration of the plastic lens and sometimes a scratched lens. And with 30 some years of the sun shining through the window and discoloring the gauges, the gauges have led a hard life.
So, now your car is 30 to 35 years older, and you want to repair the gauges, who do you call? We contacted AutoInstruments in Martinsville, Virginia, just to see how much work is really involved in a restoration of a gauge panel. We were not surprised to find how much work it takes to properly do a good restoration, but we were pleasantly surprised with how good the final results were.
At AutoInstruments, speedometers are rebuilt and calibrated to factory tolerances. Tachometer circuits and meters are balanced, repaired, and calibrated to ensure accuracy. AutoInstruments can rebuild any automotive clock and update it to transistorized quartz movements that operate on either 6 or 12 volts, not batteries. most plastic lenses can be restored to like-new, if not milky or yellowed. Scratches are hand-sanded, and the lenses are polished on special machines with rouge for an as-new appearance.
We thought you might like to see what goes into something like this, just in case you need to get your gauges repaired.
