Holes in dash, is this normal?

[fryer1979]

Looking at as many dashboards as I can, this hole in my dash does not appear to be factory. I'm meaning the gigantic gaping hole above where the radio should go. Most of what I've seen shows it should be considerably smaller. Was there some kind of rare factory option that should have been there? Maybe the factory air? Or did one of the previous owners hack this dash apart (which I'm thinking is more the case)? At least it appears to be fairly straight cut and clean.

Also there are three round holes in the panel just to the right of the large hole, what would these have been used for?

[psycotruckr]

I am pretty sure the three holes are for factory heater controls. can't answer the big hole though. looking at pic there seems to be a larger hole in firewall as well, mine has a small square one lower down.

[aerotruk63]

That is for the A/C diffuser. Two ball vents and one rectangular. You'll see pictures as guys join in.

[aerotruk63]

[fryer1979]

Ok, cool. Unfortunately I have almost none of the factory AC parts, just the heater box and a few pieces of the under dash routing. I see the picture you posted had the three knobs where my three round holes are, are those part of the AC system as well?

[aerotruk63]

That's right, they control the fan, baffle and diverter for A/C.

[fryer1979]

Man I wish I had more of those parts come with my truck. I can imagine it is going to be quite the headache trying to track it all down, not to mention fairly spendy too. Looks like I'm going to be rolling around with some holes in my dash for a while, hopefully I can get my heater to work in the meantime. Thanks Aerotruk, I was really hoping you would catch this thread.

[fryer1979]

Kinda hard to tell by the picture I posted, but the corners are pretty evenly rounded. The hole is actually well cut and straight, and it looks like the interior was painted after it had been cut. Hard to tell for sure though.

[aerotruk63]

Some were factory installed others were dealer installed. If the corners of the cutouts were square I would assume it was dealer installed.

[aerotruk63]

There is an optional under dash ashtray to replace the cutaway dash mounted one.

[aerotruk63]

These parts come up quite often on Ebay but I would watch Craigslist for junkers with the parts. Now I don't know if this is true or not, 64 did not come with factory dash mounted A/C. They could't get the pieces together for that year. You could get the underdash Cool Pack like in 63 however.

[jonzcustomshop]

some pics I have, also something to look into, lmc sells a dashboard repair panel that replaces the part of your dash that is cut out, top to bottom...
$50.00

[fryer1979]

Great pictures Jonz, thanks a lot. I'll check into that replacement panel too. Anyone know if I can use the air box (heater box) that came with this just to run a heater, or am I going to have to find a non-ac heater box and fill some holes in my firewall?

[aerotruk63]

Do you mean the box in the engine compartment or under the dash?

[fryer1979]

All I really have for it is the box inside the engine compartment, and the box that connects to it on the inside of the firewall. Basically I'll be looking for a way to make a heater/defroster work for the mean time out of these parts. Got your PM by the way, thanks. I'll have to check it out when I get home, that site is blocked from the computers here at work.