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Turbo Odyssey Part 8 -- Dashing through the, uh, Dash
December 2, 2004
Thanksgiving morning our family awakened to a marshmallow world bein' friendly. After breakfast, we headed over the river and through the woods (literally) to grandmother's house with the family packed in the Suburban. There we went, dashing through the snow. I hadn't had a chance to work on the Corvair since I dropped the motor off, and I knew that I would be heading right back to the office when we got home from my mom's house, so to get a little Corvair fix, I packed a box full of dashboard parts to work on.
My main goal was to get the instrument panel cleaned up and ready for installation. The instrument panel that came with the car had seen better days. Besides the typical loss of the black wrinkle paint on the front, the instrument housings were rusted as a result of water coming through when the dash rusted out under the windshield. I thought about repainting it and so on, but my preference was to locate a nice piece and use it instead. I have been learning about used parts and eBay lately. The lesson is that it is difficult to buy used car parts sight unseen, or even jpg. seen. Most of the parts I have purchased on eBay have been a disappointment, with the major exception being the car itself.
My first attempt at purchasing a suitable replacement instrument panel was a bare unit with no gauges installed. It wasn't horrible looking, but it wasn't the quality I was looking for. Now it is in my garage.
The second panel I bought came from Larry Shapiro and while it was dirty, according to the odometer it came out of a car with only 35,000 miles on it and was in excellent condition.
I took this part, the glove box door, the glove box door surround, the speedo from the original panel and a few other odds and ends with me to my mother's house. I figured this would be a nice project to work on while sitting around chatting with family and it worked out exactly that way.
First, I completely disassembled the panel. with the instruments removed, I went to the sink and thoroughly scrubbed it with dish detergent. There were a few areas on the front of the panel that were particularly groady, and it took a bit of elbow grease with one of those sponge-in-the-nylon-mesh-bag deals soaked in Palmolive to get them clean, but clean they did become.
That finished, I dried off the panel and began waxing lenses with Meguiars wax--the stuff without any abrasive in it. Although they were pretty hazy when I got the panel, the lenses cleaned up quite nicely.
All the metal backing plates also got wax jobs.
The next project was the speedometer. I wanted to the mechanism from my original speedometer. I knew it worked and I did not want to have to mess with rolling the new odometer to the correct mileage. Comparing the two units, the new face was absolutely perfect, and the two screws that hold it in place were nice and black with no rust. However, the donor car must have sat with the driver's side facing south for a long time, because the speedometer needle and the warning light lens in that gauge were both faded considerably. By contrast, the ones on my original speedo looked perfect. So I kept the donor case, face and screws, and changed over the rest of the parts from my original speedometer. I found that I could best get the needles off by gently twisting them past their stops.
Next I installed a quartz movement in the clock. This is the same movement available from the vendors, and is really quite simple to install. One needs only to use a pair of needlenose pliers to bend the lip around the case outward where it has been swedged over to hold the case face cover in place and remove the clockwork. There are a couple of gears to change and then the new mechanism is installed with a set of three-pronged snap rings.
This done, I reassembled the dash with the cleaned parts.
The sticker on the back side of the speedometer well tore when I was washing the dash panel, so this was glued down with Elmers. Finally, I took the harness from the original dash, cleaned it carefully and installed it on the new panel.
Here are pictures comparing the old instrument panel to the new restored one:
Here are a few more detail shots of the competed panel:
If you would like a high-res dash picture to edit into wallpaper, click here.
I also gave the glove box door and surround a good scrubbing. There's a little rust on the back of the glove box door, so I think I will mask off the rusted areas, sandblast them clean, and repaint them.
So that's it for now. I am so swamped with work, and the Christmas newsletter needs to be written, so who knows when progress will resume? Besides, its cooooold out there!