Cloudy instrument panel

You haven't tried to clean it? I've never had a problem ever with a little glass cleaner on a towel fixing this problem. You'd have to have a really beat up Prius and always drive with the windows down on a dusty road to have it get underneath the dash, and even then its only a hour or two to take apart and clean.

 

Be sure to clean both the instrument panel glass that faces you and the plastic cover that you can see by looking down through the windshield from the outside of the car.

I'm always amazed at how much clearer the readouts are with a quick clean.

 

Don't overlook that the speedometer is a projection; the lens it projects up from is in the bottom surface of the cluster area.

Have you checked that there isn't just some gunk on that? It's not hard for stuff to end up there.

 

It's labeled as a smoke(d) acrylic plate.

Maybe that is where some of the Armor All ended up, as the warning lights look sort of blurry too, and they shine through it, instead of reflecting on it.

 

Discussion of a similar issue here:

Armor all cleaner product stained the clear plastic covering of gauge cluster..... - NASIOC

In summary, it might polish off, but more likely the plate will need to be replaced.

I would suggest getting a mirror and flashlight and closely examining the plate that the light first passes through. It might be contaminated too. If this first plate is OK then putting a small mirror flush up against the second plate should give a clear image. Or at least I think so, never having done the experiment.

 

If the only problem now is slightly scratched plastic it may improve if you wax that piece of plastic. Most of the optical problem caused by a scratch in plastic is from the difference in the index of refraction at the air/plastic interface. Wax has an index of refraction much closer to plastic than air, so filling the scratch with plastic reduces light scatter. (This is also mostly what the windshield chip repair kits do, but there they use another plastic, like a methacrylate, and some system to make a flat surface over the much larger pit.) I suppose one could also go through the whole wet sanding then polish sequence, like on a headlight, but it would probably drip into the dash (which would be bad). If the scratches were exceedingly fine skipping the sanding and just polishing might work. Probably all of the preceding would only work as a band aid, the real fix is to replace that piece of plastic.

If it is any consolation I once damaged two headlights trying to clean them with PlastX. The bottle had sat too long and the solids fell out and clumped up. Even though I shook it hard the contents didn't actually mix well, so when the "polish" was applied to the headlight it was mostly solvent - and it proceeded to eat the anti-UV coating.