Repairing the Van’s Instrument Panel Bezel and Running Some Errands

Wednesday March 21, 2018 Quartzsite Arizona

Repairing the plastic bezel

Today I needed to get the van’s instrument bezel fixed up and installed.

I borrowed an electric drill and some drills from Dennis a neighbor.

I drilled the four screw mounting holes that were stripped out all the way through so I could install long bolts to fix the problem.

Here I’ve drilled holes all the way through the bezel. One of them I messed up and got off center, but I can fix it up with some more epoxy.

Here’s the part with the holes drilled all the way through.

Finding a file

Next I needed to file some flats on the bezel for the screw heads to sit on. The only problem was I only had a half round file with no small flat sides so I asked Marty and he only had the same file so I went next door and looked in Dennis’s shop and found one that would work although it was wider than I wanted, but it would work, so I filed the screw head flats.

Here I’m filing the flats.

The flats turned out ok, but two of them needed some more epoxy to make the flats wide enough for the screw heads. I used a two part putty epoxy from the tube you see there.

Ready to put back together

I’ve repaired the two bottom holes to make the flats larger. It’s ready to put back together with the rest of the parts.

It was a bit of work getting behind there and starting the nuts on the mount screws but with some patience I was able to get her done and now it looks like this. A little grey paint would make it look better. The main thing is it’s fixed good and works.

Errands

I needed to do some errands around Quartzsite which would be a good test to check things out.

So I drove over to the PitStop to get some drinking water here.

Then to the grocery store and the gas station to gas up.

Next to the library where I writing this post and will post it soon.

Headed back to the Kofa

In a couple hours I’ll head back to the Kofa to do some more hiking. I’ll try to get to the top of the ridge again up that trail. And maybe a hike to check out what is at Old Palm Canyon.

So no internet for a few days until I return.

That was my day.