Spent the better part of my morning at the local U-pick it to get a few items to finish my steering and a shifter for that 700r4, anyway had this idea about retro fitting the gauges from a 70's body style pickup (73-79) just the gauges and not the panel. This occurred to me since the silly things looked so much alike behind the panel. Anyway took the panel home and realized once the gauges were out they could be trimmed and with the backing plates from the old gauges fit perfect! Except oil pressure was upside down and the bat discharge is a newer style, but still extremely doable. Then it caught me. Absent the face plate on each gauge and they are the same design as the ones from my 42!! Almost forty years latter and other than plastic as an insulator instead of some thick paper they interchange. You can gently pry the faces of your original gauges and put then on the new ones!!! Even better yet my new cluster came from an early eighties van, same design as truck of the 70's and it has a resister on the panel to take it from 12 to six volts. I was just so impresses that either an engineer in the 40's was way ahead of his time or someone in the early eighties was still piggybacking on the old style. A testimony to quality in my opinion. Anyway I think I going to print new gauge faces on the computer on sticky tags and apply them to the old gauge faces. I can redesign the colors or what ever I want to. Then I will just lightly cover them with fiberglass resign to seal up and prevent dirt and moisture from taking a toll on the paper. Just had to share!!!!!!!!!

 

You could also get them laminated using a matte finish laminate, or even tinted!!! Surprised yourself, eh!