A major pain in the dash..

[jocko]

Good morning gents. Been working an instrument panel project, and wow, what a reda#&. Simple restoration, but the replacement bezel I ordered, and spent a bunch o time painting and gettin all pretty turned out to not even line up with the origninal holes in the gauge cluster. I'm talkin about the registration dowels on the bezel itself - they didn't line up with the black gauge cover sheet metal (that gets sandwiched between the bezel and instrument housing) OR the screw holes on the actual instrument housing. Monkeyed with it for hours, then solved with a hacksaw! Now it fits just fine..... (Even the plastic instrument lens didn't quite fit). Now, my only remaining worry is whether it'll actually fit in the dash when I stick it all back together - if these holes didn't line up (pretty basic premise for a repro chunk of steel...) then who knows what the dash mounts will or won't line up to.

Anywho, here's some pics. The "goal" of this whole mess was to freshen up the dash, add the in-dash tach (although I'll miss my column mount, it made heinous reflections on the windshield both day and night...), and to re-wire a little bit so I could fab up a PARK BRAKE indicator. You'll see some comments on the back of the instrument gauge cluster picture.

Also working the business end of the PARK BRAKE indicator - but not finished with that yet - will post when done, but - bottom line, using a regular brake light switch to work with the hand brake. Will wire to keyed power and it'll show up in the dash where TANDEM LOCK used to be displayed (although not used). I found a neat (well, I think it's neat...) way to do this and use a stock-looking set-up. Since I was adding the tach to the dash, it came with a light bulb and socket - so I clipped the existing one and inserted behind the tandem lock indicator (since it's normally empty on a C10) and will wire it to one end of the 2nd brake light switch (the one attached to the park brake handle). While the dash was apart, I rubbed the little letters that say TANDEM LOCK off the clear red plastic, then used a simple STAPLES clear mailing label on which I had printed PARK BRAKE to stick over the clear - and poof, out comes a factory looking PARK BRAKE indicator. (I tried to take a pic, but I have to get so close it just becomes a blur - but trust me, it exactly matches the TANDEM LOCK lettering and the remaining OVERSPEED lettering on the other side. If anyone is interested, I used Calibri 10 font to make the match - and that took a while to figure out, wasted a lot of paper...

Anyway, someday I'll get this mess back in the dash and hopefully the mounting holes will line up. Or I may need more than a hacksaw. But I have a hammer too.
jocko

Oh yeah - forgot to mention in case anyone interested - since I dont' need a choke, I bored the choke mount hole out to 1/2" and inserted a hole plug from the Lowe's hardware section (after painting it to match). I think it was about $0.70 - seems to have worked out ok. I was originally going to mount an LED there for my parking brake plan because I just wanted to fill the hole - then discovered the TANDEM LOCK and OVERSPEED lights not being used and found the Lowe's hole plugs. and there you go.

[jbgroby]

That looks real nicely done.

[jocko]

Originally Posted by jbgroby

That looks real nicely done.

Thanks jb! Not sure if you all can tell, but the lens is a little hazy/scratchy - that's actually a NEW one from LMC. I wasn't real satisfied with the quality - probably could have polished my old one to look as good. But oh well. I also noticed that the original dash lens had a semi-transparent finish in the places where the gauges were not - but the LMC lens was all clear. But turned out ok. If I hadn't seen it that way on disassembly, I'd never even noticed when done. Thanks again.

[SCOTI]

I was curious about the fit quality of these aftermarket housings/bezels.

I sand blasted my OE piece to get a nice, clean, fresh substrate for applying color. But, the bottom corners were speckled w/small nicks (I assume from swinging car keys or rings on the owners hand repeated making contact). Unfortunately, the blasting didn't remove the 'pits' in the metal. I considered just getting one of the aftermarket pieces but elected to hit that outer section (side & top) w/some 80 to 320 grit progressively. It removed the pits enough that w/a fresh coat of satin black, you no longer notice the damage.

Sounds like it was a good decision on my part after reading your post. Nice job on the rebuild. Hopefully your install is easier....

[Rogue]

Wow, great job.

Thanks for the inspiration to work on mine.

[jocko]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

I was curious about the fit quality of these aftermarket housings/bezels.

I sand blasted my OE piece to get a nice, clean, fresh substrate for applying color. But, the bottom corners were speckled w/small nicks (I assume from swinging car keys or rings on the owners hand repeated making contact). Unfortunately, the blasting didn't remove the 'pits' in the metal. I considered just getting one of the aftermarket pieces but elected to hit that outer section (side & top) w/some 80 to 320 grit progressively. It removed the pits enough that w/a fresh coat of satin black, you no longer notice the damage.

Sounds like it was a good decision on my part after reading your post. Nice job on the rebuild. Hopefully your install is easier....

Scoti - I had planned to use my original vice buy an aftermarket one since I thought it was in good shape - then I discovered that some of the holes in it were "man-made" and not original... and they were drilled in the finned part, so no way to really reconstruct them. I couldn't really tell since the po had screw heads laying in there, so I thought they were just normal attachment points for the dash. Oops. Anyway, I suppose one way to take care of those holes after all the blasting would be to put a thin coat of body filler (or spot putty) on it as long as all the rust was gone - then just sand and paint. But sounds like you got it worked out nicely anyway with the progressive sanding.

I also had a hard time paint matching the original silver. Tried to match the original and the glove box emblem - shot samples of about 5 shades and this was closest. Still, may have to re-do the glove box emblem just to get them exact. But, close enough for government work for now.
jocko

[DPowers]

Looks good- like the parking break idea

[jack SF]

hey jocko can you make another park brake label/sticker.. i started the park brake light thing a few months ago but lost interest. this will get me started up again. i used a tiny micro switch from Radio Shack. but same idea as yours.

so can i pm you my address and some payment for that lable/sticker?