Ok, so a while back I was cleaning out the GLH and mysteriously found the instrument panel from an old Benz. I don't know where it came from. I assume it's because I own a much newer Benz and much like the Gremlins from the 80's movie, once one moves in, it brings others and overthrow your sanity.
Anyway, I like how some instrument panels look, especially older ones and I thought this looked too nice to just throw away. Then I figured, it just begged to be made into a picture frame. This one was rather crusty so I set to work taking it apart and cleaning 50 or so years of crud from it.
Just start removing screws and nuts to get to the internals
The speedo came out as one chunk. It still worked too!
Here's the internal bits with no housing
Here's the housing, no internals.
The lenses (real glass, this is German baby!) and inner chrome trim rings are held on in a pretty neat way. There are bosses molded into the plastic that stand proud of the rear of the lens. Then there is a (sharp!) steel retaining ring that is placed on the rear of the glass, then turned a few degrees. This ring is similar to the ring used to hold some fuel tank sending units in place. A few of these bosses broke off, but there were still enough points holding it in.
Then I pulled the four trim rings and the clock out to see if I could polish the chrome well enough. Here's a picture, not quite a before picture. I'd already spent some time cleaning it.
Here's the after. I used a headlight lens polishing kit to make it shine. I didn't get too anal about making it perfect. This whole thing is really just an experiment. I didn't even know if I'd like it.
The inner trim rings were lotsa fun. I sent them flying across the twice, one time it landed back in the GLH I took it out of. I think it was trying to escape.
Anyway, I printed a couple pictures, used the lens to cut them to size and reassembled everything. I made a simple plate out of some scrap plastic to hole the clock in (since there is no more back panel) and hooked up batteries to the clock. It works!
Here's the final product.
I think it turned out all right. My only regret is that it looks like a picture frame you'd buy. I wanted it to look like a car part that has been repurposed. I was going to leave the fuel/temp/oil gauge shell in and put my kids in place of the gauge face (kind of in the three windows) but the pictures would have had to be real small. Joey48442 dropped (literally haha) a miata IP off this weekend. I'm going to investigate that and see how it'll work.
Kinda freaky. 
That's me.
