Bgw70

Link to old thread... I never realized I could refinish the shift ****. The **** has some deep scratches in it and I think it was from a little purse dog from the previous owner.
Are any of you wood workers?
The OP in this thread never went into detail on how he did everything.
If any of you could tell me how i should do this, I would be very grateful and would do a write up with plenty of pictures etc.

ShawnOk

iTrader: (1)

Could you link the thread, please? I was interested in this at one time. I send a spare **** off to be hydrodipped. The company ended up being a complete useless waste of time and kept d***ing me around for nearly 7 months for one ****! (ExtremeHydrogaphics in Shreveport, LA--> AVOID AT ALL COSTS!) I demanded that they return my **** whether finished or not. I still haven't had time to file a BBB report on them but plan to in the future with all the email correspondence and their flaky responses and run around bs. Fortunately, they did send it back after I said I was coming back to Shreveport and will come in and pick it up myself. When it was returned it had only been sanded (poorly) and base coated (poorly) in gloss black. I'm using it now and it's looks fair. I will attach pics tomorrow.

Retroplay

Since it has some pretty thick clear coat on it, if the scratches don't make it down to the wood, you could probably just redip it (or just brush over the scratches) with polyurethane clear coat and the scratches would disappear.

If the scratches do make it down to the wood, then I would hand sand it. Not sure I would trust it with any machine with the exception of a spindle sander or possibly a belt detail sander with a very very fine grit. Too many curves. If the scratches aren't too deep, working it by hand shouldn't take too long. Strip off the clear coating, sand going coarse to fine grit until you get a polished finish. The grit you start with will depend on how deep the scratches are since you need to remove material to get rid of them. I wouldn't go lower than 220 personally. And then work my way up to 1000 to 1200 grit to get a glass smooth finish.

Once you are done, just dip it in polyurethane coat again. If you get any coating on the chrome, just wipe it off before it fully dries.

I have scratched mine a couple times while removing the stereo. But thankfully, the scratches disappeared just wiping it down. I have started removing the **** when I am playing around in the dash.

Bgw70

Link to old thread...

Sorry about missing the link! ;-)

Retro, that sounds like the way to go...just sand off the clear or until I get past the marks.
220, 1000, 1200

Do you mean for me to actually dip it in a can of clear polyurethane?
Then I would let it stay in that position until it begins to dry then turn it back over to allow the polyurethane to smooth out.

A wooden dowel should work well to hold the ****.

Retroplay

How deep of scratches are we talking? The coating is pretty thick stuff, you shouldn't need to dip it and keep it dipped.

I would first try to just just brush the polyurethane over the scratches. The coating should blend and just make it crystal clear again. Most likely no sanding needed. But hard to be sure unless I knew how deep you are talking and what they look like.

Bgw70

I will take some pictures and hope they will show the damage...I really believe a little dog chewed on the shift ****.
It would be nice if I only needed to brush the polyurethane over the scratches.

You know, it might be possible to just lightly sand the areas with damage to smooth the surface then add a coat to the entire shift ****.

mandyfig

Or just get a new one from fleabay...$90

jadu

iTrader: (42)

wow, great find. I never knew this either. some oe leather/wood/chrome ***** go for 2 or 3x more than that on ebay. Mines doesn't have scratches, but rather major sun damage and fading. I'm glad to know its repairable.

Bgw70

Trust me, I have been looking for some time now, but I would like challenge and save a few bucks for once!

Bgw70

Harold57

Some of those marks look like drill marks. They are definitely down into the wood. A good sanding disk or belt (preferably mounted, not hand-held) ought to be able to take those out. You'll just have to keep turning the **** around to prevent flat spots.

Retroplay

Yeah, but wow.... he'll have to remove so much material. Much worse than I thought. I wonder if he could find some wood filler that would match well enough?

I guess it doesn't hurt to try. I would strip off all the polyurethane first to see how much damage actually made it into the wood.

Bgw70

The guy sold me the car earlier this year he is 74 yrs old, he purchased the car when it was 7mo old...the guy was the type who did not work on things, I could just tell. When I asked questions he knew nothing about cars...
With that said, I do not think it was a drill or his wife.
At first I thought it could be a ring, again no...the car had been detailed when I purchased it but when I removed things, seats, interior panels etc, I found dog hair everywhere!!!
I really think it was a dog.

The cup holder and ash tray lid would not operate because everything was full of spilt coffee and cigarette tar...ish soap and water fixed all of that...

Helogadget

When I bought my SC it came with apparently an RX shift ****. It is bigger than a standard SC **** and had a chip out of it. I found a used one on Ebay for about 99.00 and replaced it.

Bgw70

I am not opposed to purchasing a nice used one from eBay. I just want to give restoration a shot, if I fail and admit defeat, an eBay purchase will follow! ;-)

I was motivated by the thread I found earlier!

Sanding did begin tonight and I will need to sand into the wood slightly, that also means I will need to stain the wood again. Either way, that is fine as I plan to use a stain and finish all in one product.