Dash

After cutting all of the holes for the gauges & air vents, I sanded/bondo’d/re-sanded to get the dash smooth, then used SEM’s spray on “Texture coating” (which is designed to mimic an OEM style lower bumper cover), then a top coat of matte Black paint (I used matte to reduce glare). I wasn’t too concerned about this being perfect, and while there’s a few blemishes, it came out really nice. The texture helped to hide 99% of the inspections, and looks OEM. The paint helps to harden the surface, to hopefully stand up to wear/tear.

proper equipment is key…FB dust is terrible!
texture coat on…after drying I added the matte Black
all done…paint was still drying, so it looks glossy.

Gauges: we bought Speedhut gauges that have a classic look, but have a neat OBDII input that provides all of the data…you connect the OBDII port, power, ground, and that’s it! The speedometer is fed by a GPS sensor, and then the fuel levels require wiring to the tank senders (if I was using GM OEM fuel tanks/senders, this could also be provided over the OBDII link.) I added a OBDII Y connector, so that I could leave the gauges plugged in, and still have an available port for my laptop when tuning.

while there’s still lots of wires, this is super simple as all of the power/ground and OBD II data is daisy chained together. The big coils of wire are for the 2 fuel senders.
lights!

Ignition Panel: I had been delaying the dash panels, as I assumed this would be more involved…but after my 1st drive, it was such pain to have all of the wiring done w/ temporary stuff (wire nuts, touching the starter solenoid wire to the batter to start,…), that I made a quick panel to mount everything, which gets all of the wiring 100% complete, but the fit/finish of the dash panel is ~80%; I’ll redo this later. This includes the Emergency power disconnect (which will both be a safety function & my “key”), ignition switch, and start button. I’ve got a lot more still to do…but that stuff can wait (turn signals, lights,…brake balance adjuster,…)

while the dash look flat, the upper edge and front edge are actually off by ~15 degrees. This was a quick dash as I didn’t want to spend too much time on it yet…
Engine Start (Momentary switch), Ignition (on/Off), and emergency Power
the business end…using lots of heat shrink to protect from inerrant shorts.
working under any car dash is a PITA (Pain in the @ss)…but a GT40 is 5X harder!
My office is coming together!