Well, after being annoyed by the bird's nest of wires under the dash and the grime that resided under there with them, I finally tore everything out and got busy. I took care of the wires with zip ties to get them up and out of the way, then washed the entire area under the dash. Using rubberized undercoating, I coated the kick panels and the firewall from the cowl down to the floor pans. They will be replaced fairly soon anyway. On the inside of the dash, I washed, degreased, sanded, and painted with Rust Oleum semi-gloss black. On the outside I went with a standard white for the base color, and did everything else including the dashpad in cast iron gray (same as the grill shell). I am currently working on the grille inserts to replicate the GT500 inboard headlight design.

By the way, early last month I got the steering wheel from my '82 L700 hoping it would work. Alas, it does not. I might be able to make an adapter for it, and I will get back to you all on that.

Tell me what you think!

These were the colors on Monday.


Here are the new colors!









And here are the grille inserts in progress. These "buckets" will allow the use of two standard headlights, as was done on the early GT500s.

 

wont them lights block yoru radiator core flow?

 

Did you "pepper" your license plate with paint?

 

I'm not sure what you mean. I painted it black, then used a sander to strip the paint off of the raised letters and numbers. Clear coated it and put it on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by b-uno

wont them lights block yoru radiator core flow?

They shouldn't. I've run the truck with the buckets in and the openings blocked off, and it hasn't made a difference in temp.

 

well do a write up on the, lights they are gonna be nice!

 

Did you paint the gauge faces? Looks awesome.

 

Thanks, I hope so. I'm documenting everything I do for a later write-up. There are still some things that have to be worked out, but I'll keep everyone up-to-date as I get stuff figured out.

Thanks, Alex! I did not paint the gauge faces- they are stock black. They were just about as perfect as I could ever ask for, and I didn't want to risk messing them up. Someone on here painted their gauge faces white and did black numbers, but I can't remember who it was. That would truly look awesome with my painted surrounds and the white faced tach, but I'm happy with them for now.

 

that grill looks nice! but ouch! your dash is gonna have big screw holes in it when you decide to remove that stuff hanging off of it-its hard to find a dash that hasn't been chopped/drilled/dented/screwed- i remember doing that when i was 17-wow did i regret it when the stuff came off the dash. i wish i would have hung the guages, CB and lights underneath. i ended up looking for 6 months to locate a good dash again, i must have looked at nearly 75 trucks.

 

Actually, there were a lot more holes in the dash when I took it out. Thanks to a good amount of bodywork, they are now invisible. I have other plans for the very bottom lip of the dash, so I had to leave it unmolested.

Thanks for the compliment on the grill. Hopefully soon I will have pics of lights in it!

 

Do you need a set of heater controls?

 

I have mine in the shed. I took all of the heater/ AC stuff out...completely. All that's left are the vents...and I haven't figured out what I ultimately want to do about those. So I painted them and put 'em back in for now.

 

cool! I spent way too much time rigging up defrost nozzles to fit under my new dash. Maybe I should have taken your approach! I'm curious as to how your grill is going to look when it's done and painted too!

 

Looks nice, but what's with the big red light below the light/windshield switch?

Josh

 

Thats what I was wondering, is it like a warp speed button?

 

The "Holy S#*T" Warning Light.

Josh