How to polish your gauge cover

Ever look closely at that clear plastic cover over your gauges? If you look close you'll notice that there are tons of very fine scratches on it, which dull its look. Have you ever gotten dash cleaner/polish on that plastic? I did, and the cleaner stained the plastic. No matter how much I scrubbed I couldn't get the stains off of the plastic.
There are kits that you can buy which include some type of polish to get those scratches out, but why spend money when you probably have everything you need to polish your gauge cover already?

The first thing you will have to do is to get the plastic piece out of the car. To do so you'll have to take some of the dash apart to get it out. Its really not hard at all. Basically all you have to do is take a few screws out of the bottom and a few screws out of the top and everything comes out pretty easily.

The next thing you have to do is start polishing. I had some meguiars deep crystal car polish and some 3M fine cut rubbing compound laying around which I used, but you can use whatever you have.
You'll need some type of rubbing compound, but you probably don't want anything too rough...hence the "fine cut" rubbing compound I used.

Then you'll want to really polish that baby up by buffing it out with some polish. That's polish, not wax, "polish"....don't get the two confused. Wax will not help at all here, you'll need an actual polish.
Start with the compound then use the polish to make it really shine.

1. Begin by taking the two torx head bolts out of the top of the dash. (arrows "A")
2. Then you have to remove three bolts that hold the lower dash panel on. (arrows "B") The bolts are on the bottom of the panel
3. After you get that panel off you will need to remove three bolts that hold the upper dash panel on. (arrows "C") The bolts are behind the lower panel (B) and are on the bottom of the upper panel (A).
4. Next remove the upper cover (C) and then remove all of the bolts that hold the clear plastic gauge cover on and remove the cover.
5. RUB away!!! Take the rubbing compound and rub away until you get all of the scratches off. Then use the polish to buff it to a nice shine. You may have to do it over and over until you get the desired look. I've noticed that rubbing it back and forth (not in circles) makes a better shine on this type of plastic.

After we were done we couldn't believe the result. It actually looks like I can see through it now! It almost looks like glass, rather than scratched up plastic. Take a look and see for yourself, the result is stunning!

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