Well, I finally took the plunge and had some of my interior trim pieces painted. It is NBM (perfect match to exterior but the flash makes it look a little lighter). I know some people will think RICE , but I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out, and I promise to not replace my loudmouth tips with coffee cans . The pieces were painted with a base coat / clear coat approach with an adhesion promoter to help fight flaking. I even had my t/a bezel around the gauges painted, which most people leave black. Here's how I did the gauge bezel:
To remove the clear plastic cover from the whole t/a bezel assembly, I used a dremel with a cutting disc (slow speed) to go around the perimiter of the clear piece, then the clear plastic cover came off exposing the actual gauge bezels. I brought that piece to the paint shop and that's it. To re-assemble it, I used some clear RTV silicone, and once everything is installed back into the vehicle, you can't even tell that the bezel was cut open.
Here's the 2 best pics that my camera would take:
<---If you look closely here, you'll see my hand-stitched shift boot (with NBM matching thread) which took me about 4 hours to do
<---Close up of the bezel and gauges.

Thanks goes to brent for making the "SS" and "car #" decals for me .
To answer some possible questions:
The gauges are Macewen Motorsports silver overlays (no needle removal) which retain stock illumination at night and include the t/a bezel for camaros.

 

That looks great IMO! I noticed the attention to detail with the shifter boot stitching before I even read that you did it... really stands out and look good!!!

 

I love that. Looks great

 

Outstanding work...looks very nice

 

that's got to be the nicest painted interior i'v seen...the clear coat makes it stand out alot

good job

 

I think it would be cool if you did the same thing to the **** as you did to the boot.

 

wow... just, wow

I noticed the blue stiching on the shifter boot before I read it too But I didn't know YOU did it!

 

sweet

 

That flows SO well with that shade of blue. I absolutely LOVE what you've done....I don't think it would like as nice if I did it to my bright red Z tho

 

Thanks for all the kind words everyone!! I though you might like it, since the common colors I've seen are silver or black. I was inspired by the interior of the new GTOs for the stitching on the shift boot. I know the GTOs also have matching stitching on the shifter **** as well as the hand brake, but I haven't figured out an easy way to stitch those in my SS, but it would look sweet. There is someone on some other boards that is trying to put the GTO's **** & boot into his f-body, but is having a hard time getting the proper parts since the **** doesn't just screw on. It's some weird assembly and the project seems like more trouble than it's worth, not to mention the cost of having to buy GTO parts from GM, while I only spent like $2 for thread and ~4 hours of my time (and some sore fingers). There are places online that sell colored shift boots for like $35-ish but those looked like it would be too much color for me and I doubt I'd find a close match to NBM anyway. With the money I saved on the boot I can just about get a full tank of gas out here in Cali
Anyway, thanks again everyone

 

Why not? i could see it, red car, silver stripes, silver guages(like His) and red interior accents....
never know until you try it... could look nice if done right.

 

I agree. Do some searches on the various boards for people with painted red interiors, this way you can see it before you do anything. If red/silver is your color shceme perhaps silver accents would look good instead.

 

Very clean and nice looking. Definitely not rice. Great work.

 

looks nice

 

zirbe32- Oh yeah great job! i even showed my pops because i was thinking about doing the same thing... he's a "less is better" kind of guy and he said it was very tasteful.