Does anyone know what type of paint was used on the dashboards in 64? I thought it was laquer and not enamel - It's time to repaint mine - so I hunted up a rattle can (I don't trust myself with the compressor setup yet, especially inside the truck where space is tight) laquer in the color I wanted and tried it on one of the defroster vents... and the old color bubbled right through If I can't get the right type of rattle can stuff to keep it from happening does anyone know of a good sealer to use?

I'll strip it to bare metal if I have to but it's a last resort; I'm really just looking for a cheap and easy way to freshen it up for now - the whole interior will get a repaint when school is finished and I have more time... The dash doesn't match the rest of the interior now anyway; the interior has been repainted twice already that I know of... but the dash looks like the original paint - it and the gas tank are the only pieces still in the original color. Why they bothered to remove the tank and mask the dash when they 'hosed' (partial pun intended) the rest of the interior is beyond me...

 

The interior paint is the same stuff the outside was painted. They ran the trucks down the assy line and painted the inside and outside at the same time. I don't remember if the dasboards were separate or a welded unit, and painted separately. If you used laquer paint and the old stuff bubbled the paint, I'd try to get enamel and try or probably primer the dash and wet sand and repaint.

 

The steering colum didn't match the interior when I bought the truck (it was green where the rest of the interior is red; I'm guessing it was changed out as a unit with the steering box, but I'm not sure). I used enamel on it to paint it black so it didn't 'contrast' quite so bad (Green and red go well at Christmas, but not inside a truck...); the green paint on the column did some fisheye-bubbling through the enamel I sprayed on it too (although granted not quite as bad as the red did to the laquer).

I knew most of the interior had the same enamel as what was on the outside, but I was under the impression the dash and insides of the doors were painted separate than the rest of the truck with a different type of paint (if they didn't match the outside of the truck, anyway). I'm not sure where I picked up that it was laquer really, I think I was told that when I had the same problems repainting the inside of a Pinto a long time ago, in a land far far away... (don't laugh, it was a fun car!) I'm not sure what would be their best practice when doing the assembly line painting, on say a white truck with a red interior...

Priming and wet sanding is one of the options I thought about, but most paints will get still get through normal primers and affect the base-coat, so you still have bleeding if they aren't compatable - is there a decent rattle-can primer/sealer out there? If so hints on where to find it? I know there are a few made for professional use in regular spray equipment, but I wasn't wanting to make it that big a production at this time...

 

I just finished this project about a month ago because I got tired of looking at metallic green paint.
I removed everything screwed down: vent covers, speaker cover, glove box, ash tray, the guage cluster, and even the little piece at the end of the dash on the top. I stripped all the paint off the small pieces then I wet sanded the dash. Taped off the rubber and glass, then rattle canned with primer. Followed that with enamel. I used a paint that was for farm implements.
It's not professional, but looks good for a daily driver.

 

I didn't squirt a primer on the steering column before I shot it the last time - I'll 'try' it with the rest of the dash if I don't get any hints on a good sealer. Right now I'm leaning toward enamel since it didn't have quite as bad a reaction as the laquer did, but I'd really like to find a good sealer so I know I only have to do it once! Once it bleeds through like that it's not the same texture as the rest of the paint so it's hard to smooth back out without going down to bare metal...