Restoring the V-16 centre dash with hash lines

[Amer Ahmad]

For the life of me I cannot devise a way to restore this centre piece. The shallow  grooves have golden paint in it and the facia is painted semigloss black. Any suggestions.? How did they make this in the first place? Looks like screen printing . I have seen replicas for sale on ebay. These are not of same quality and have white hash lines.
IN my car someone put grease on it to save it and it travelled down. The top portion is quite good but the bottom has lost the golden lines and no cleaning or rubbing compound can bring the golden lines back. Thanks

[Duncan Fox]

I have the same issue as you on my 16 , I do not want to use the silk screened repros that are available.  The original is nickled  Brass and the lines are etched into the finish. I have a company willing to do this for me  , but need some numbers to help spread the  costs.  Is this dash for the Van Den Plas 16 in Pakistan? Contact me

[Barry M Wheeler #2189]

What I would sincerely advise you gentlemen to do is join our Club. As part of your membership packet, you will receive a Directory which has all the V-16 owners of your years in it. Most, if not all of our members are quite willing to advise and otherwise help others owning their year car. Please be advised that many of our older members who may have such cars do not use this Forum. Best of luck. BW

[Chris Cummings]

I have asked around to anyone I thought might have solid knowledge about how the panel that surrounds the instruments was finished.  No one seems to be certain what the process was or how it was carried out at the time.  From looking at the panel on my own car, it appears that Cadillac (or their supplier) started with a sheet of thin brass stock, which they embossed or engraved with the cross-hatch pattern and the letters for the spark and choke control labels.  Studs were fastened to the back of the panel to attach it to the instrument panel.  Then the entire face of the panel was either oxidized or painted black.  Then the lines and letters were filled in.  On my panel, the color of the material that remains in some of the cross-hatch lines is a faded white, or perhaps it was always an off-white or cream color.  But it appears to me to be paint.  Where the filler material has been rubbed off, the exposed lines and letters are the same black color as the background (which is what makes me believe that the whole plate was colored black first, and then the lines and letters were filled in with a contrasting hue).  No part of my panel has been worn down to the brass, so I don’t see any golden color on it.  One very knowledgeable person suggested that if you remove one of the instrument panel lights, the area that was covered by the base of the light will show you how the rest of the panel originally appeared.  Perhaps a graphics or printing company can set up a silk screen or other imprinting process whereby pigment could be precisely applied to the embossed areas on the panel.  The consensus seems to be that anything that gives the appearance seen in the period photos of the V-16 instrument cluster is good enough for judged events, and there don’t seem to be many people who could fault you for it.

Chris Cummings

[Joe Konarowski]

Might try this company if they could do something in that field.http://www.nostalgicreflections.com/auto.html