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Instruments panel background.

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 10:01 pm
by luli
Rover P2 cars had been relatively abundant in Israel during the fifties. All of them with the R prefix before the engine or chassis numbers. Today at least 7 has survived, but as a long time Rover P2 enthusiast I have known many more.
All of them had a bright background to the instrument panel, with no writing on it. However, British home models have a black background with writing. I am restoring now a 1947 10 (LHD) and like to get it as close to the original as possible. How should the instrument panel look?

[img]http://lulisml.files.wordpress.com ... .jpg[/img]

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 1:10 pm
by lakesrally
I've seen a number of instrument panels that have had the black paint removed but to the best of my knowledge they should all be black with just the raised border unpainted. Export cars might be different but I doubt it. If anyone knows differently then I'd be glad to hear from them.

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 12:06 am
by 47p2
My export model has the original dash and it is black with only the raised edge showing a chrome finish

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 5:08 pm
by luli
Should I conclude that of the two dozen Rovers or so I had watched (or had taken apart) over the last 45 years - in all of them the black paint just faded away? Any idea what type of paint was it? Was it painted on the plain brass or on a chromium plated one?

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 8:35 pm
by 47p2
The paint looks to be a satin/eggshell finish and painted on top of the chrome plating

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:14 pm
by lakesrally
I used a spray can of semi-matt (I think, it was a long time ago) and it goes straight onto the chrome, just mask off the raised edge. I then used dry-rub letters and gave the lot a covering of matt lacquer over everything once I was happy with the lettering.

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 4:01 pm
by P3Steve
http://www.rover-forum.thersr.co.uk/vie ... f=18&t=809

Here is a link to an earlier post on the P3 page where I did my dash, I used water slide transfers as I couldnt find any rub down letters the post explains how I did it.

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 8:25 pm
by luli
Thank you for the responses. Here is a link to instrument panel restoration:
http://www.wilkes47.freeserve.co.uk/page8.html

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2013 6:05 pm
by 36t46s
[quote="luli"]Rover P2 cars had been relatively abundant in Israel during the fifties. All of them with the R prefix before the engine or chassis numbers. Today at least 7 has survived, but as a long time Rover P2 enthusiast I have known many more.
All of them had a bright background to the instrument panel, with no writing on it. However, British home models have a black background with writing. I am restoring now a 1947 10 (LHD) and like to get it as close to the original as possible. How should the instrument panel look?

Many years ago I scraped off the black paint from the instrument panel on my 1946 Rover 10 (to make it shiny!), leaving what remained of the lettering. Now I am restoring it to the original appearance. As I could not find the original P2 font anywhere on the web, I decided to digitally reconstruct the upper case letters as a custom font (using Fontstruct). The letters with distinctive and attractive period features are: A E F G K N P R S and V. The original font was used by Rover in labelling diagrams, as well as by Lucas in their parts catalogues.

For the STARTER, ON OFF lettering I have prepared a page in MS Word for printing out circular self-adhesive stickers, white (no ink) on black. The material I use is designed for inkjet printing and is made of polypropylene, 60ยต thick. It is intended for outdoor use and should prove extremely durable, especially if coated with a protective lacquer. As the material is slightly flexible it accommodates to the slightly convex shape of the circular switch panel.

The sticker is stuck onto the switch panel, after carefully cutting two holes (shown with finely-dotted circles) for the starter button and the key barrel. This can be done before the sticker backing is removed with a fine blade such as a scalpel. Provided that the surface is chemically clean, the sticker will adhere well when pressure is applied.

Image

For the lettering on the instrument panel itself, the options are to use stickers for each word, for each switch, or for the entire panel. I have decided on the whole- panel approach for my 1946 10.

Image

Image

Re: Instruments panel background.

Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:56 pm
by p2nass
Dear "36t46s",

Your sticker of the instrument panel looks very good. The letters are almost similar to the orginal one.
It is possible to sent me the digital input to make a sticker like yours?

Please contact me by fill the contact form on my website: http://home.kpn.nl/w.nass/

Thank you.