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 79-86 Center Console Restoration 

Please excuse the low quality of some of the pictures.  I had to try to use fairly high compression to keep the size of this site under control. Please be helpful and send comments here.

Go to part: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11

Part 7:  Is it Ash Tray or Ashtray?

The front ashtray was all sorts of nasty.



The previous owner managed to paint red on the bottom.  He got the cylinder and everything.



First thing was to remove the cigarette lighter.  There is a small nut holding the whole thing together that is on the threaded connection that the wiring harness plugs into.

Unthread the nut and remove the cigarett lighter.

Now, what to do about this red paint?  Strip it I guess.  Here is what I used:



Fiberglass Paint Remover just means it works slower.  After glopping it all over the ashtray panel...and using lots of paper towels, I got this:



Not too bad.  With a bit of effort, I was able to make the lighter socket respectable again.  The ashtray housing was good enough to primer so that's what happened:



And then painted with Eastwood's Under Hood Black and reassembled.  The texture still looks great!



But wait!  There's more!

The ashtray itself.  Ohhh baby.  It had been used and was rusty.  Break out the wire brushes and hit that thing hard.



One trick is to bend the cigarette holder up so you can get the wire wheel farther in there. 

In the end, it looks allright.  It needs to have some serious media blasting to get it all perfect.  This will end up being the ugliest part of this console.



After I got it fairly clean, I hit it with another awesome Eastwood product:



Eastwood's Crystal Clear is formulated for bare metal.  It isn't too shiny (a little bit).  So I hit the inside of the ash tray with that.



You can get a repro one now I think.  It's mostly hidden anyways so no big deal.  The cigarette ash simply corrodes it way too much.

In Conclusion:

Stripping, wire wheeling and paint took care of the front ashtray and ashtray housing.

 Part 8: Ashtrays Were Like Cup Holders.