This is step number one in relocating your climate control for a gauge set up. This has been one of the things I most wanted to do since seeing it in a custom Shelby not to long after I bought the car. I will do a follow up to this on how I will install it, as well as where the climate control will now be inside the car.

I attempted a few different ways to do this and although this will not be the finished product that goes into the car, it will be very similar to it. I need a few tools I don't have handy at the moment. I will post pictures of the other attempt I made at the end of the thread and if you have any further questions on how I did it don't be afraid to ask. All I can say is buy extra parts because you WILL break something.

Supplies:





You will need some various implements for the dremel, a cut off wheel and a few different sanding choices are ideal.

The first step is to take it apart. There are 4 attachment points to the panel itself (they vary from body style, some have a 6mm 6pt nut, some have a torx) in each corner. The back cover is held on by torx screw and come out pretty easily.



I will leave you to gutting the panel itself. It is very straight forward, and all of you that attempt this will do it differently. At some point during this disassembly, you need to take a 2" hole saw and open up each hole for the gauge itself. Upon the test fit, it looked something like this:



Ok, so a few things to note at this point. We need to open up the space below for a uniform panel, and you also need to take a sanding wheel on the dremel to open up the holes just a touch. The gauges need to be able to "float" somewhat in their respective homes for final fitment, and this ultimately depends on how you plan on attaching your gauges.

Now on to making and filling the hole in the lower section. This is where I used a cut off wheel, there is no science to this so have some fun and cut away, it all gets painted later anyway. I used two pieces of 1/8" thick plexiglass to fill the gap as a solid base like so:





Then I used an epoxy to cover the entire thing:

 

Looking back, I should of used a different epoxy and gone thicker to make my life a lot easier. The epoxy I used wasn't sandable, so I created some unnecessary work for myself. I used a type of putty made by loctite to fill the panel even that was quick drying and sandable to make life easy, like so:





This is obviously after some sanding, but you get the idea. An epoxy would be MUCH easier to get a nice even surface with and it will most likely be how I do my final version of this. For now, these pictures will have to do:









And as an alternative, as mentioned at the beginning of the thread:





I liked that version, but the gaps and going about filling them was simply more than it was worth to me!

-Robert

 

Nice job Robert

You definitely have a lot more patience and time than I do!

 

Thank you Doug just try to take advantage of the free time while it's available!

 

great stuff.

 

So instead of the metal panle could you not use a piece of abs textured plastic? Then you don't need to paint/finish the piece. You might could also just plastic weld the panel to the trim piece. More importanly, are you just deleting all your hvac functions or relocating them(or did I miss that?)? Way to be creative and good luck man.

 

I'm not using the metal panel, I drilled out the factory piece. You can really use anything, the question is how much time do you want to take to line the gaps/what not.

My Hvac controls will be moved, I will do a write-up on that when the time comes but I working on a "plug & play" harness for that one.

And pardon my ignorance, but plastic weld? My biggest problem with making that all one piece is trying to get the colors to match at that point, it now is far from a perfect match. Where do you go about getting ABS plastic? I would LOVE to find something the same color/texture as the factory piece.

 

Here is just one example of were you can get some textured plastic sheets. You can find them in a lot of different sizes and textures. It would just take a little research to find the one that looks the best. However, in this application I'm not sure that the exact texture would make too much of a difference.

http://www.eplastics.com/Plastic/ABS...-Plastic-Sheet

As far as plastic welding, below is a general idea of what it's about. There are many options and variables with this stuff. Anything from high end to moderate. They even sale plastic weld kits at Harbor Freight(cheap). If all else fails, you can use a soldering iron to bond two existing plastics. I've done this many times to fix breaks in mustang interior pieces. Looks like a cool project. Good luck!

http://www.plasticweldingandtools.co...icwelders.html

 

Nice job ... I wanted my gauges in the center console too , but I went with the SOS radio panel , of course I had to loose the double din size unit to do it ...

http://www.speedofsoundllc.com/05%2BRadiopanels.html

 

Alan (owner) is actually local to us, I've seen those panels and they just didn't do anything for me. That and the fact that I want to put a double din touch screen in kind of drove me to do something on my own!

 

Its coming along pretty good, the people with your gauges ever email you back about the wires?