Dash hackery. What's going on here?
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Senior Member
Joined: 05-06-2008
Posts: 1,076
From: Over here
Dash hackery. What's going on here?
First, remove a perfectly good center dash bezel and begin hacking on it. I've taped off the pebble grain area to avoid mucking it up. Here, I've removed the switch panel below the a/c ducts...
Thread Starter
Senior Member
Joined: 05-06-2008
Posts: 1,076
From: Over here
Here, I've cut out the hadard switch area and have relocated it to the bottom of the bezel, where the rear wiper switch used to be. The wiper switch hole was too narrow, and too long to house the flasher switch. If it had just been too narrow, I could have filed it to size. Instead... hack, hack, hack, and voila.
Thread Starter
Senior Member
Joined: 05-06-2008
Posts: 1,076
From: Over here
Because of the complexity of the mods I'm doing, I need to check for integrity at intermediate steps. Here, I've patched the place where I cut out the flasher switch, blocked everything smooth, and shot it with some epoxy primer. It's pretty straight, so now I can start cutting into it again.
Thread Starter
Senior Member
Joined: 05-06-2008
Posts: 1,076
From: Over here
Ansel Adams would be proud of this pic... it's such a work of art. Thank you Treo 700wx camphone.
Here, I've welded in the buckets for some 52mm gauges that will be going into this panel. I've got a lot of shaping to do on the top of this panel to get the bevel and curve back into it (look at the stock panel above the a/c ducts and you'll see what I'm talking about)
More to follow...
Here, I've welded in the buckets for some 52mm gauges that will be going into this panel. I've got a lot of shaping to do on the top of this panel to get the bevel and curve back into it (look at the stock panel above the a/c ducts and you'll see what I'm talking about)
More to follow...
Platinum Member
Joined: 05-09-2006
Posts: 6,805
From: "Upland" Mesa, Arizona
Looks good and very interesting XXL.
Because it appears you thought out your project very well, I'm a little embarassed to ask this......is there room for the gauges behind the bezel (I have no idea what that area looks like
)?
Because it appears you thought out your project very well, I'm a little embarassed to ask this......is there room for the gauges behind the bezel (I have no idea what that area looks like
)?
Thread Starter
Senior Member
Joined: 05-06-2008
Posts: 1,076
From: Over here
Plenty for the lower gauge. The top gauge has interference with a mounting tab and alignment pin for the bezel, but I'll cut them out. There are quite a few mounting tabs on the bezel. I am going to recreate the alignment pin just a bit higher, and use a dab of mastic on the female (dash) side of the new alignment pin so that it gets a little friction as well. This will be plenty of hold on the top edge because of all the other mounting tabs on the bezel.
