Has anyone made one for their pickup? I'm thinking of getting a 3/8" piece of aluminum and making a nice panel to put some autometers on. Most of my dash gauges don't work anymore and I have a little 3-gauge panel attached to the dash. Any ideas?

 

I haven't ever seen aftermarket panels that look very good in these trucks. I would hit the pick a part and find a nice panel and guages and rebuild your dash.

 

i have not seen one but i've thought about it for the project i'm hopefully starting soon

 

The main reason that I made this gauge panel is that the original speedo was completely obscured by the rim of the steering wheel. All are VDO gauges from Summit and all are electrical.

Volts/Fuel/Oil Temp/Oil Pressure/Speed/Tach/AutoTemp/Water Temp



I may still throw some switches into the empty spots. Most importantly I can now see all the important gauges!

 

Nice job on the panel! I was considering doing much the same thing.. what material did you use for the face? Is it leather covered hardboard? In any case, looks sweet.

 

Heres one I saw at a car show back in 2005.

 

Nah, just some charcoal coloured vinyl over a light gauge (~1mm) aluminium sheet. Used contact adhesive to hold it there. It's actually 2 pieces of aluminium, 1 that holds the gauges and is in a sort of a z shape which you can just see in the pic on the lower edge. The 2nd contoured bottom piece fills the gap in the sides and the bottom. I'll have to try and get some better pics of the construction of it soon.

I had to notch the dash a bit (but you can't see it) to clear the screws I used in the side.

 

Are you using aftermarket lights (brake, turn signals etc)?. Since the PCB (printed circuit board) has those weird twist and lock contact lights, just wondering if you modded a solution for that? Or just went aftermarket lights. Or none at all.

Nov

 

Awesome looking gauges! I'm going to have to work on something like that in the garage while I'm waiting for tropical storm Fay to pass through.

 

Those are both GREAT panels! I like th leather style more. Please do some how to pics soon!

 

Wow - Sweet - Goes to show you what you can do when you use your creatativity.

 

The top row of lights is still in their original housing, I'll just have to run some new wiring to them. I'm pretty sure the connectors are a standard size and you can get them with pigtails, otherwise I'll just have to make something up for them. I'm in the process of completely rewiring the whole truck so they'll be fully functional.