With my parts order from Deloreango.com arriving faster than anything 1.21 Gigawatts can jump start into life, I was able to resume my A/C panel LED upgrade. Since I needed to order just one replacement LED bulb for the one I damaged I decided to order further parts that I'll require once I'm back from the Belfast DeLorean Revival trip in order to upgrade to LEDs in the instrument cluster. By doing this I qualified for free delivery 😜 Also whilst I was ordering I decided to get a new A/C panel decal. Although I do prefer to keep original parts where possible, sometimes it's just necessary for safety or in this case aesthetic reasons. As shown below, the previous decal was starting to come away from the panel and the black colouring was disintegrating from behind letting stray light shine through. Some of this deterioration can be seen circled in red in the image below.
I unpacked the new decal which was the later of the two versions available.
I used a hot hairdryer to loosen the adhesive on the rear of the original decal and then peeled it off the panel.
Front
Rear
Following the removal of the decal there was residue left on the panel which I needed to clean off before applying the new one. I used adhesive remover followed by soapy water to remove any adhesive remover that could have been left and let the panel dry. The before and after images of the panel can be seen below.
Before
After
Whilst cleaning the panel I noticed that some of the black paint used to stop light seeping from one chamber to another was flaking off, so I took some of my kids black craft paint and painted the inside of the two top dial recesses, and the recesses of all three indicator lights at the centre bottom (Cooling Fan Fail, Rear Defogger, Door Lock).
After allowing sufficient time for the paint to dry I then applied the decal to the panel.
Then came the time to refit the panel. From the passenger side I positioned the panel close to its final position and tilted it forward somewhat so I could then carefully manoeuvre each of the lower three indication lights into their housings over the panel, starting from the furthest way (Cooling fan fail light). It was a little fiddly but I managed to get all three in successfully as shown below.
I next pushed the panel into position and lined it up with the screw hole to the lower left side of the mode switch. I inserted and tightened the screw and replaced all three dials.
To firstly test all lights I turned on the headlights to activate the LEDs for the headlight and hazard light switches (which also illuminated the cigar lighter ring). I also turned the key in the ignition to activate the panels back-lighting, this also activated the "Lock Doors" indication light. Finally I turned on the rear defogger switch to activate the rear defogger indication light. I did not managed to find a way to test the cooling fan fail light. The resulting illuminated panel can be seen below.
In the above photo the lower indication lights appear quite intense. This I believe is due to how the iPhone camera contrasts the different lighting levels. In real-life there was not so much glare and the wording and image of the rear windscreen could be seen through the light.
Next I turned off the rear defogger switch to extinguish that light.
And finally I turned off the headlights to extinguish the headlight and hazard warning symbols in those switches.
So the next job, post the Belfast DeLorean Revival trip, will be to remove the binnacle and replace the lights in the instrument cluster. I am also wanting to replace my temp gauge decal which has some of the numbers written in nail varnish due to an accident when refurbishing the cluster during the original restoration (not by me 🤷🏻♂️). Finally, another minor update will be to replace the binnacle lens which currently has two scratches on it. They are minor but I see them every time so I've got myself a replacement lens to fit.
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