Question on painting under dash

[dougc_portland]

My 54 Hornet restoration project had considerable surface rust under the dash. I removed the instrument panel and the dash board. The area has been wired brushed and treated with a rust converter. I am now ready to paint. Are there areas that I should not paint? I am concerned about screwing up the electrical grounding or is this a non-issue? Does the instrument panel ground on the dashboard?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Doug

[Hudson308]

You do want to maintain good ground contact between the instument cluster, dashboard and body sheetmetal. Virtrually everything on the instrument cluster such as light bulbs, gauges, radio, etc. require a good ground to funtion properly. This is especially critical with 6 volt systems. One way to maintain the ground conections is to place small round pieces of masking material (like round stickers of some kind) over the screw hole area on the bare steel surfaces of subassemblies that will come in contact with each other later during reassembly. The stickers can be purchased at office supply stores for next to nothing. They provide a neat way to prevent paint build up on these mating surface areas, as well as in the screw hole threads thenselves. Once the subassemblies have been painted, simply remove the stickers before reassembly.

[dougc_portland]

Hudson308, thanks for your response and suggestion. I am off to the office supply place. I remember someone telling me that in a 6 volt system that a good ground is absolutely essential hence my concern.

Doug

[dwardo99]

Why not just attach a substantial ground wire to the inside of the dash and run it to the chassis? Then you can paint the dash any way you like.

[Hudson308]

That would work, too... as long as you're tied well to the instrument cluster shell.

[Park W]

dwardo, I think the concern was not so much the dash itself being grounded, but grounding of individual items to the dash.

[dwardo99]

Could be. I had the impression Doug's concern was that painting the mating surface of the dash would insulate the dash from the chassis, which it would. I have found in fooling around with old motorcycles that you really can't have too many ground wires.

[Swasp76063]

Why not just attach a substantial ground wire to the inside of the dash and run it to the chassis? Then you can paint the dash any way you like.

I pulled my dash and painted everything, but when I put the instrument panel back in, I attached a ground wire from the chassis and attached it to one of the studs protruding from the back of the instrument panel and tightened the nut down on the terminal end of the ground wire. Don't have to worry about any rust forming behind the cluster and have a good ground too.
Bob