Here is what I did a couple weekends ago. I started with a standard dash, cut out a poster board template of the front dimension, and then did a layout on the template of where I wanted my guages. After the template was completed, I traced the template on a piece of thin panel board and cut everything out. Did a test fit of the gauges in the board, did some fine tuning, drilled holes for the indicator lights, and did a light sanding. I then had to cut all the gauge pods from the original dash leaving about 1/2 inch lip on the front so I could attach the panel board to the dash panel using some small bolts and nuts. At that point I used some Tiger Hair (fiber glass that works like bondo) on the entire new dash panel assembly. Sanded it, moved to bondo to fill in some of the larger imperfection, sanded, moved to primer, sanded, and repeated as nessessary. Finally I painted and installed the guages. I was happy with the results, but may do some more finish work and use a quality automotive paint to get a better show quality. I also would like to try to take the hump off that I left from the original speedo. I don't think it would be much work and would still be very rigid.
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