The Mariah Owners Club - Almost finished with dash

Sorry for the delayed response here.. I have been out of town. Anyways, here is what I did: I must start by saying that we do not have alot of money so I had to do this as cheaply as possible with it still looking good! First, all my switches worked fine so I only replaced the sleeve that goes around the outside of the switch and the switch face. Originally, my Z275 came with Carling IV switches which are curved and look better in my opinion. But they are very hard to find now, and to find all 16 that I needed was impossible. So I went with the Carling II instead.
As far as the woodgrain...this is the painful part. After reading all the posts about redoing the woodgrain where you have to dremel out the MASSIVE globs of glue that hold it inplace and then mail it off to a company that will dunk tank it for ALOT of money, I set out to find a cheaper way. I was in Lowe's getting paint for my daughters art project and it hit me. Yes, it is actually spray paint! I took one of the small pieces off and did a test and was amazed with the results. It is actually Rust-Oleum Universal Exterior paint and primer. The exact color is called "Hammered Brown." It is plastic exterior paint so I figured it couldn't hurt it. I put 3 coats on and then put a coat of laquer over the top. And I did not remove the panels from the dash. It was a pain to tape off everything, but still less hassle than removing all the gauges and switches and dremeling out the glue, hoping that you don't snap the plastic!
I know this was the redneck way of doing things, but it looks great and worse case is that the paint fades and I either redo it or pay the big bucks and send it off to get done the right way. Oh and the switch faces and sleeves cost me $200 for all 16. This also included 2 custom switch faces because no one seems to carry "Power Seat" and "Defogger" switches!