My 71 Duster Project
Well, it has been very busy around here with the move, but we are semi settled for the moment. I started working on the car a little more. The new project has been the dash. I am still planning to restore the original dash and gauges, however, everything for that job is expensive, and time consuming. I also have to redo the whole instrument cluster since the circuit board is in bad shape. So with the help from some of the boys here we decided to try to make my own dash for now. We started working on this about a month ago and it is turning out pretty good so far! I picked up a brand new set of Auto Meter Phantom gauges from one of the guys here for $300 as he was going with a different gauge style. One thing that is nice about that is the speedo has zero miles on it so the mileage will be accurate once I get this baby running. I got the metal from Mogan and Slate in Lemoore, Ca. It is .090 aluminum. For the gauge cups, I used roll cage tubing and had them cut at work in the machine shop. I used the tig welder at work to weld them on since my welder is only a mig and does not weld aluminum. I ordered a custom wiring harness from Fast Lane West for these gauges and got them all wired up. The wiring kit also came with led turn signals, brake and hi beam lights as well and it integrates right into the Painless Wiring harness that I am putting in the whole car. Here are some pictures of the dash and gauges all wired up. I plan to go over to my buddys sometime this week to put the dash back in the car and I will take some pictures of that for ya.