Dear all,
so the bezel that surrounds my gear stick has several scratches from when I'm wearing my wrist watch (I live in NZ, so I drive a right hand steer 1999 AP1). Now, I have thought about taking off the surface coating with solvent - but then I noticed that the silver stuff below the surface coating is ABS plastic, which would dissolve as well.

I don't really want to repaint the bezel as it would not smooth out the kinks. Decals are not an option either as I find those fake carbon ones super tacky.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help :-)

 

Personally, I'd sand down the scratches, prime with a bulldog type plastic prep, and repaint. Might be trouble having it match the IP surround.

 

I had good luck with using fine sandpaper to sand away the brushed steel look coating and polished the metallic chrome with metal polish. It sounds like you're beneath all the coating and now have exposed plastic. I would do what BooGTS says and sand it down and reprep. You can use flat black paint to get that conservative look.

 

Get em painted they will look like mine!

 

Mine was also getting scratched up. It didn't look too good cosmetically. Rather than leave it like that, I got some rubbing alcohol and cotton balls, and rubbed the surface coating right off. It's kind of shiny underneath, but it's a lot better than looking at all those scratches. Plus, I'm planning on upgrading my center console eventually anyways.