Hi all,
In this post I described how I went about recovering the shift knob for my 1998 US Spec LC I bought in Dubai. I was putting the shift knob on and I looked at the shift position indicator and it really annoyed me. here's a photo:
I don't know if this is because most of the early model 100's I see have been out in the desert, but almost all of the shift indicators have the decal or whatever it is pulling away from the plastic looking really bad. When I bought this shift lever assembly at the salvage yard I made an effort to find the best-looking one I could, but after handling for a while and disassembly this one had gotten worse. And it seemed like such a shame to put my nice new camel-leather covered shift knob on this sad looking indicator. And looking at the situation, you really have to dissemble quite a bit to replace the plastic indicator piece at a later date. Making this just incrementally more existing was the fact that I will be away for 2-3 weeks and my housekeeper tends to move my stuff around--I do this work on my dinning room table, and I did not want to leave it in pieces. So, at 8 pm the evening before a flight back to the US leaving at 2:20 am, I decided to try to get this puppy taken care of before I left. (I also hoped that my mechanic would tell me he was ready to deal with Dhanno my 100 for which this is destined, so it all could be on the truck when I got back. We will see about that.)
Anyways, looking at the reverse side--
It looks to me like toyota first applied black paint on the underside of a clear plastic item. Then they silkscreened on 2 or maybe three layers of extremely thin paint. The letters and numbers are relatively thick paint and seem to adhere. It is the black layer surrounding the letters and numbers that deteriorates over the years and pulls away from the plastic.
I had hoped this was a decal that I could fix by getting it loose with water and solvent and re-applying it. But no, I concluded this was silkscreened on and it was just flaking off. I decided to try to remove the flaking paint and then replace it with some black acrylic paint.
I used a sharp craft knife to chip off the flaking paint
And then soaking in water with some rubbing alcohol
The problem was that the black oblong hole surrounds came off at the same time, meaning that I no longer would have a clean indicator of the orange bar showing s*** position
I decided that there was really nothing to be done but clean up all of the flaking paint and see what it looked like--and I found that I did not mind having a large orange bar showing the shift position
So then I masked off the area that I wanted to be clear:
And applied acrylic paint suitable for use on plastics
And this is the finished result
I don't think it looks to bad. I have lost the glowing letters because I painted over them with thick paint, but I care more how it looks in daylight. The dash shows the gear position anyway.
And just to be complete about it, here is the finished, refurbished shift assembly:
In this post I described how I went about recovering the shift knob for my 1998 US Spec LC I bought in Dubai. I was putting the shift knob on and I looked at the shift position indicator and it really annoyed me. here's a photo:
Anyways, looking at the reverse side--
I had hoped this was a decal that I could fix by getting it loose with water and solvent and re-applying it. But no, I concluded this was silkscreened on and it was just flaking off. I decided to try to remove the flaking paint and then replace it with some black acrylic paint.
I used a sharp craft knife to chip off the flaking paint
And just to be complete about it, here is the finished, refurbished shift assembly:
