Painting the Original Cluster with Krylon Chrome

While I was waiting for the repro bezel to ship, I went ahead and painted the old bezel with some rattle can chrome. I had removed the gauges, lens and optional parts and decided to retain the argent as it was in pretty good shape.

Masking the Ford Argent

Masking off the argent lips was easy and I decided to try Krylon Chrome as it looked to be the shiniest paint on the shelf.

Masking the bezel and rings.

I started by painting the outer face of the two rings from the lens, masking off the inner argent to retain the semi-gloss gray.

The rings painted up fine though the color was more gloss silver than chrome. 

Now on to the bezel ... I messed up by putting on 2 coats of the Chrome paint. Though very light coats, the paint was thick and the left side was not as crisp as I would have hoped. However the color was much more chrome than the rings and not bad for a paint job. I could still see the tooling patterns on the face and I put the gauges back on to check out the results. 

Painted Bezel

 It turned out OK but was a far cry from what I was hoping to accomplish. Overall the bezel seemed more silver than chrome, though I was able to retain the soft argent non reflective inner panels.