Glad to hear life is going well and the truck isn't forgotten. You're definitely not alone, my pickup project stalled years ago due to life but I still have it and drive it occasionally.

 

Glad to see you are still moving forward. Please start up an Instagram account.

 

I'm glad to see you are still moving along and hope you stay with it, will be a fine truck someday. I definitely understand about life getting in the way especially when you have young'uns, but quality time spent with them now will reap great rewards later. You and co425 were a big inspiration on my current conversion to take more time and make it look good. The first conversion,(4bt/5spd), I did in 8 days. It was functional and I drove it for 8 years but wasn't pretty. I don't have Instagram, my phone bothers me enough during the day already but if that's what you decide to do Ill figure it out because I like your work. Enjoy your rambling too. Keep it up, we'll take it however we can get it.

 

Thanks guys!

Taking baby steps here & there & will try & get pics up soon.

As for instagram, I'm usually late to follow change (took me years to get a cell phone, then a "smart" phone, etc.) but it may be in my future. I'll still try & ramble a bit too. We'll see. Not positive on anything at this point.



It was more tongue in cheek. If you come work on it I'll actually drive this thing this century. And I know damn well you can stick faster than I can tig. My point is more that I'm almost to the point where I drop the vanity case & just git'er done. You & I both know I have a hard time with that though!

 

Its funny, I know EXACTLY what you mean, and I don't even have kids. I've been sneaking out into the garage whenever I can just to get a little bit done.

Keep at it! Glad to see you're still working on it when you can. Maybe if you wait long enough you can have the kids help out!

-Kyle

 

Sooo... This thread is BORING without pictures!

Finally just sat down & MADE the time to upload these to photo-suck-it. It's midnight & I should probably be actually working on the truck instead of sitting here, but hey, I'm being lazy.

Here's what I've been working on since I got snowed in while on vacation in January & had a lot of time to read & figure out what I wanted to do next & what to order.

1st up I resurrected my dash panel/gauge cluster design. I had a bunch of free time while stuck in the house in Oregon with everybody too sick to leave the house & so much snow outside it was hard to do anything. A couple late nights there & I know where I wanted to go with things when i got back here.
I had a surround layout I had started YEARS ago and I dove back in to that after looking at google images again for an hour or more & checking setups from here and the aluminum insert a guy is now selling on eBay, etc. I was tempted by the eBay one as it looks like a nice piece for the price, but I have 2-5/8" and 5" gauges & it was set up for 2-1/16" & 3-3/8" ones. Oh well, would it really be my truck if it wasn't full custom??
Here's where I was cad wise:


That lead to more cad. Cardboard Aided Design this time though


I just happened to have a spare dash here - which makes life a little easier for mock up purposes. I just had to crawl up in the rafters to get it & wipe an inch of dust off it...


A little more cad and then more cad



It was at this point I was realizing I am kind of an idiot for being cheap as I'm a bit OCD and my "cheapness" on parts would bug me & show...
I have a lot of gauges for this thing that I have been collecting for a while. All gauges but my pyro & boost that I put in a little on dash mount that I made when I was driving the donor are autometer pro-comps. Mostly liquid filled ones because they look race-y and "cool", and because the cummins will rattle this thing I'm sure so the the liquid will help that. Well, at least I convinced myself of that.
My pyro & boost are z series = black bezel (they were cheaper = this is where the cheapness bit me!) where as my pro-comps are silver bezel.
The tricky part & where my OCD kicked in is when I was trying to figure out a tach. I want things to match and of course all the pro-comp tachs were 9k rpm min. I don't need that on a diesel! They make the z series tachs all the way down to 4k, but that one is 2-1/16" and the black bezel & it won't mach...
So that's when the crazyness & figuring out layouts came in.
I decided I wanted to look at different layouts & I wanted to really SEE what these layouts or gauge configurations would look like, because I certainly didn't want to spend the $ on the gauges & time on the fab & come up with something I didn't like. I got the pics of the actual gauges from autometers website & sized them & dropped them in!

Here's another screen shot with all the gauge layouts I tried. You can't see the gauge images because they are so small, but I have 22 different configurations here with different sizes & bezel colors etc.


As I said I have a 5" speedo here that I had planned to use on the truck but I also started looking at the 3-3/8" stuff so as to try & match a tach.


More fun with cardboard starting





Keep in mind these pics represent hours of wasted time on cad & span 2 months or more in time. I work sloooow now!

I got to the point where I was trying to decide if I wanted to drop the cash on a new speedo or not, so I printed out the option I liked with the 5" speedo & threw it in the truck. I have seen these speedos in lots of race trucks & they never looked out of scale. Those are custom fabricated aluminum dashes though. I figured it would look fine in the truck right??? Hmmm



Ok, so maybe putting my ACTUAL speedo in it would help clarify



Yup, that decided it. Looks too big/out of scale (thanks Steve - if you are reading this!). Picture above doesn't do it justice as to how big/out of place this thing looks. The fact that the 5" speedo & 3-3/8" tach layout wouldn't allow fo things to be centered on the steering wheel didn't help the cause at all either.

So yeah, that's about where I left off. I have decided I'll go to a 3-3/8" speedo. I also decided to go to a 3-3/8" tach (the one gauge I had left to buy) for symmetry. While autometer does make a couple 5k tachs and 1 option in 4k they are all too small for what I think a tach should be at 2-1/16". They make 6k in 3-3/8" though so that is what I am going with. Now I just need to decide if I want a silver bezel to match the oil press, water temp, etc. or a black bezel to match the boost & pyro & the newly added fuel pressure gauge my brother got me for my birthday this year - which is also a z series (black bezel).

I keep going back & forth. I'm indecisive if you can't tell!!!

Thought was all silver bezel in the dash & then the 3 black bezel ones in a pillar pod. I then kind of liked the idea of leaving the 2 I already have in my dash pod I made & putting 1 black bezel centered above the tach & speedo in the dash (like is shown 2 pics up). In a perfect world this would be my pyro gauge, but I'm nervous about how that will work with pulling the dash panel if I have to as the thermocouple doesn't detach from the gauge so I'd have to pull the thermocouple from the exhaust manifold to pull the gauge pod fully.

The more I talk about this the more I think. No decision has been made, but I have the eBay auctions for both the black bezel stuff AND the silver bezel stuff open on my computer for when I decide to be spontaneous & pull the trigger.


Ok. I've rambled way too long. It's now 12:50! Time to go to bed. I had planned to post more pics of other work but I guess that'll have to wait for another day. Darn my long rambling when I finally sit down to do this! At least I won't blow it all with all my pics from the last 3 months in one post now!

 

Great update! I don't have half that time into my dash, but I spent countless nights mocking stuff up, making CAD models, and searching for the perfect gauges. Its a very important part of the truck (maybe the most important as far as looks), so the time is well spent IMO.

I really like your arrangement with the 7 gauges. I was only able to fit 4 of the smaller gauges on my main dash, so I will have the other 3 somewhere else. BTW do you have pictures of your mount for the pyro & boost gauges?

FYI I agree with the 5" speedo being wayyy too big! I actually went with 3 3/8 speedo and 2 5/8 tach. Autometer 4487 and 3788. Hard to find a diesel tach!

Here's a shot of my gauge panel. Panel will be painted black.

 

Thanks.

I'm going to run a gasser tach & convert it. As you said - not many diesel tach's out there & the ones i have found are too small.

Here's some pics of the little pod I made. I may go to an autometer pillar pod as the one for the 92-96 bodystyle can fit our trucks with a little trimming. Not positive on this yet though.

These are the only pics I already had in photobucket = before both gauges in & before I painted it black. it rests on top of the dash sitting flat, but original thought was it may be a pillar pod. !st thing I ever made for the truck I think.





You can kind of see it resting on the dodge dash in this pic

 

Nice tip on using the 92-96(97?) gauge pods. I might try this out. Its either that or using the individual mounting cups, which might look cool also.

 

I've got pics of the 92-96 pillar in a bumpside. If you want um send me your email address. The gauges point upward a bit/are a bit tall if you use the 3 pod version but my seats ended up sitting so darn high in this thing it will be no big deal for me.

 

I had a 1995 F250 Supercab. It had a 7.5L "460"cid. I was looking not either putting a new 460 and then a new Trans and rear end. Then having all the body work done. I could have had it done for a little less than $49K. I went to a mechanic that I thought was honest, but then when I started looking at all of the bills I got from him for work he did, it turned out that I was keeping his shop open. I heard that he has laid off 3 mechanics that work for him. I don't know how true it is, but when he tells you that the freeze plugs that were behind the timing chain were leaking, And I have a neighbor that works on base "and he's the shop foreman" says there is no such thing as freeze plugs behind the Timing Chain Cover I would tend to believe him I have known him for many years. I even thought about putting diesel engine in the truck, but it was too cost prohibitive than to buy a brand new truck. So I bought a new Ram 2500 Laramie.

If I could have gotten a Cat or Cummins Motor in a Ford Super Duty I would have bought a Ford F250 Lariat Super Duty. I still have my Ford E450 with the V-10.

 

HAHA look who's back with a vengeance. looking good man, like you never put it in time out...

 

Gauge pod and panel looking trick.

Keep up the motivation.

 

Today is my first log on since 2015 and I haven't even FOUND my build thread yet in order to update it that I pulled the CC out of the bushes and have been driving it for 3 weeks, embarrassing that it's been sitting almost a year because I convince myself the motor gave up.

Besides, seeing you and other guys on social media I tend to forget how much time passes concerning getting on the forum.

Glad to see you're back at it, there must be some kind of magnetic pull for returning to FTE for a few of us. Now to get caught up on 200+ threads...

 

Glad you're back to driving it & yeah, seeing stuff on the other spots helps us not realize how long we've been away here. Although like you said something always draws me back. And then I end up where you & I are both at now which is gradually going over all the subscribed threads I've missed out on. I just did 3 more, but still have a bunch to go through!