Replacement Instrument Chrome Bezels

There is a Ebay seller who sells replacement chrome bezels for classic cars. I purchased some 2? bezels for my Plus 2. When I came to fit them I discovered that they were dimensionally different to the original Smiths items. Having a thinner cross section, it was impossible to bend the tabs over when fitting them, they were useless.
I provided the seller with the relevant information necessary to understand why there was a problem. Sadly, he was not prepared to take responsibility for the problem.
For obvious reasons I cannot name the seller, but if you do buy bezels do ask the question ?are the replacement bezels an exact replacement for the Smiths original?

Nothing wrong with naming the company if their service and product is poor. If you save others here what you?ve gone through folk here will be grateful. I hope you?ve left suitable feedback.

For obvious reasons I cannot name the seller,
I cannot see any obvious reasons. I suppose he sells “Smiths” generic bezels and you ask for “Smiths for Lotus Elan”.
You just say they do not fit your instruments, and that he is a fool in ignoring your legal (final customer) revocations rights. Just fair naming him here.

I’ve just replaced the bezels on my original ( black S1) instruments for chrome for a S2.
I got them from smiths-instruments.co.uk/contact-us
They fitted the 2" and 4" gauges respectively.
I note some sellers have 4 tabs, these only had 3 on the 2" bezels, but they seem to have worked well.

Just raise a case with eBay. They will refund.

+1 to at least reporting it to EBay. You have tried being reasonable.
Or a simple link to his Ebay Ad on here would be usefull.

The problem with leaving negative feedback etc is that I had ordered the bezels a couple of months before I attempted to fit them and eBay will not allow me to leave feedback now. I would say that the seller is not denying that the items were purchased from him.

When I explained the problem to the seller I proved the following photo which clearly shows the replacement item to be significantly thinner than the Smith?s bezel. I also provide measurements that confirmed the Smith?s bezel to be 3mm + 1mm tag and the new bezel to be 2mm + 1mm tag. It is self evident that the new bezel?s tag will not be long enough to crimp around the lip of the gauge. The simple fact of the matter being that the replacement item was patently different to the original.

In what I can only describe as a ?smokescreen? the seller demanded the following and clearly redundant information:

  • Picture of the front face of the instrument without bezel
  • Picture of the front face of the instrument without bezel and glass
  • Picture showing how the glass fits into the instrument and whether it protrudes proud of the instrument case. This may require more than one picture.
  • Picture showing lip of the case
  • Picture of the rear of the existing bezel at 45 degrees showing tags
  • Thickness and diameter of the glass.
  • Thickness of the gasket between the bezel and glass.

The only thing he left of his list was my inside leg trouser measurement!

Patently a shyster then determined to shirk his responsibility.

Name and shame! Perhaps we can all email him demanding he backs his product?

Facebook isa powerful tool where poor customer service is evident!

my guess is this was designed without the square rubber… though I would rather source an other set that can fit properly - with the rubber.

Original Smiths bezel has the glass inset requiring that profile thickness.

Is that an Elan gauge, the +2 has flat faced Bezels?

those are for earlier cars s1 - s3 elans (not +2 sandy

Yes, flat faced