I think I will be using the lower of the two sets of Gauges if they seperate the same as the uppers do . Top is Mercury marauder and lower is crown victory police interceptor.
Any ideas on doing the scuttle edges?
I was working out details on converting 8 cyl ford tach to 4 cyl and sorting out which guages to use-I have a few clusters to play with. I ended up
in the garage with some cardboard doing some cad. (cardboard aided design) I think I came up with something I like but need to come up with something
to frame/pad the upper part of the scuttle as the dashboard would be inset by a few inches. I will probably be running 3/4 conduit around the front
of th scuttle just to get a nice radius and to slightly stiffen it up. I am in Canada so I could line it with razor blades and they would not care
but I want to make it relativly safe and look good. Also the center pods would be about an inch or so less proud of the console.
I think I will be using the lower of the two sets of Gauges if they seperate the same as the uppers do . Top is Mercury marauder and lower is crown
victory police interceptor.
Any ideas on doing the scuttle edges?
Personally, I would not have any gauges on the right side of the centre consol.
You could try looking at Cobras and other old car replicas to see how their dash is laid out. YOu dont have to copy, maybe just for ideas.
The design is not overly to my liking and I dont quite understand why you are using some donor dials and then have to buy some new. They wont
match.
HTH, I thought I would be honest
Biz
I have to second bi22le's comment about not mixing dials - they would look crap!
As far as ideas are concerned, have you looked through the sticky thread at the top of this section?
dash piccys
By the way, your steering wheel is attached to the wrong side of your car....
[Edited on 20/3/11 by stevegough]
the most important thing is to make something YOU like and not what pleases other people, if you like it then that's all that matters
For ideas I'd suggest looking through google images at vintage car dashboards to see how they dealt with the scuttle edges as there are many ways
to do it, in the old days it tended to be padded like the old fighter planes. That's how my Falcon was for many years but now it's new dash
is flush with the scuttle and blended in which is a totally new look for the car. Your car is quite different from the norm and I suspect the dash
will be too, a nice breath of fresh air 
keep going as the car is looking very smart, ever thought of taking a mould of it once done as a body kit for the 7 style chassis??
[Edited on 20/3/11 by Mr Whippy]
Actually all dials will be refaced the same. I am considering 3 choices- make them match the marauder ones and the small gauges are standard
autometer guages( the secondary gauges on the marauder are factory autometer), second was to reface them all to look like vitage smiths, The third is
new faces out of alloy with the numbers ect embossed on them. This would require either painting the embossed digits or painting the face then
sanding the paint off the face for silver numbers. I deal with embossing metal most days.
The right hand side dials are more for symitry than anything else, although they are perfectly viewable. Top right was clock (which I want) other
were fuel and volts.
I will start looking up vintage airplanes to see how they did the padding -thanks
Dale
If you're recessing the centre dial section could you not make the dash out of 2 pieces? I made the main dash then cut the centre section out and
made a second piece which attached to the rear of the main dash and held the dials. Once the two were joined the dash was nice and sturdy.
Out of the two dial sets I prefer the second set and as long as you're happy with the layout that's what matters.
quote:
Originally posted by jabbahutt
If you're recessing the centre dial section could you not make the dash out of 2 pieces? I made the main dash then cut the centre section out and made a second piece which attached to the rear of the main dash and held the dials. Once the two were joined the dash was nice and sturdy.
Out of the two dial sets I prefer the second set and as long as you're happy with the layout that's what matters.
Yes the easiest way would be two pieces. A wood back all the way across and a wood or glass center piece. I think I could recess the dials in the
center so that the tops are just about flush with the curve of the center and recessed at the bottom which would smooth them out.
I found out that I cant use the black dials as they are from an all one piece cluster but the Marauder ones when taken apart are all seperate and is
actually a calibrated police interceptor speedo.
A little work with the scope,square wave generator ect has allowed to recalibrate the tach to 4 cly and its dead on and the speedo when the
calcualtions are set to 8000 vss pulses per mile is dead on from 15 mph to 140 .
Took me a day or two but I finally found the gauge faces I saw along time a go and liked. Just have to make them up on the computer and modify the
faces for the numbers I need ect. The tach face is laid out to go counter clockwise. Has anyone used one like this (tach or speedo as I think it
will be easily reversed).
Here is a pick of the guage style I really like and am going to try and duplicate.
They were only used as far as I know on 1940 -1942 chirs craft boats--very very rare.
Dale
Sorry, not much help, but I loved this:
quote:
Originally posted by DaleI ended up in the garage with some cardboard doing some cad. (cardboard aided design)
My buddy and I here in Vancouver are putting together our first effort at a Champion book car. We were thinking a woodgrain dash would look sharp.
Has anyone done that because I don't see any examples after searching the forum?
Cheers - James.
quote:
Originally posted by Firebus
My buddy and I here in Vancouver are putting together our first effort at a Champion book car. We were thinking a woodgrain dash would look sharp. Has anyone done that because I don't see any examples after searching the forum?
Cheers - James.