The Dash Replacement

The car originally came out of the factory left hand drive, as it was destined for the dealership in Germany. Shortly after Howard imported it to the UK, the car was converted to right hand drive. As the metal dash was covered by a padded dash, the quality of the dash conversion was obviously neglected. What was lurking under the padded cover was pretty awful, and the radio opening had been butchered to accept a modern head unit. As a padded dash wasn't wanted on the finished car it was decided that the best option was to graft in dash from another car.

The original, hacked dash, with the padded cover removed.

After sourcing a replacement dash, which had been carefully removed, it was stripped back to bare metal and checked over:

As you can see, the correct radio blanking plate and dash grills were also found.

Once Gareth was happy that the replacement dash was good enough to use, it was mocked up against the exisiting dash to provide markings for the cuts. The old dash was going to have to be cut out perfectly to allow the replacement to butt up seamlessly. The spotwelds along the dash to scuttle join were drilled out to leave a clean surface for the new one to be mated to. For a first attempt at doing this, Gareth did a pretty good job!

Welding the dash in was a painful and somewhat frustration process. The metal is incredibly thin, and even an experienced welder friend of ours struggled. Perseverance paid off, and the final product was good. You'll also notice that a number of the dash holes have been removed, including the grab handle. This was primarily done for appearance.

Thankfully, the good fitting dash only needed a small skim of filler, and a couple hours of work to start to come together.

At this point (January 2009) the dash still sits in this first guidecoat, as the weather just got too cold, and spare time was non-existant. It's not far off being finished, but I'll spend another day on it before it's ready for paint.