Dashboard Mk2 Complete

Dash Mk2 fitted! First things I noted was - its slightly bigger and very tight to fit. Also what I hadn't planned on was that the wood is thicker so it stands out more and gets in the way of the column shroud. A new slightly narrower one will be required as currently its all bunched up so it doesn't rub on the back of the steering wheel hub. Annoyingly, the hidden fixings are countersunk a little too much and a small depression in the vinyl can be seen where each fixing is. Other than that it seems to be fine and this vinyl is far less shiny-plasticky than the dashboard mk1.

I plugged everything in and turned the car on (switch pos 1 only) and the only wiring error (or so I thought at this stage) was the wipers came on immediately. Sorted that so then procrastinated a bit more by tidying up the garage to put off trying to start the car.

Now it's been stood for over 3 weeks so I expected it to take a bit to get it going but it wasn't having it. It turned over ok but not a sniff on actually firing up. Suspecting something electrical I got the multimeter out and started buzzing out the obvious stuff - dizzy +ve feed ok. Tacho output ok. By chance I happened to have one multimeter probe in the tacho wire and the other probe brushed onto the engine block - BEEEP! I had used shielded wire and where I had crimped onto the outer shielding to tie it to earth I had inadvertently crimped through to the signal wire so the coil was shorting directly to ground, hence no spark.

Fixed that and it fired up ok, immediately idling with no throttle but the tacho wasn't working. I was paying close attention to the speedo though, watching for the dreaded needle flicker but nothing to be seen, needle was happy. I was itching to go for a drive so ignored the dead tacho and went for a 15 min drive and used as many electrical things as possible to make sure it all worked. Still lean on part throttle but the idle was very high so I can probably close the throttle blades on idle a tiny bit more and hopefully get more transition circuit working. 

Got home and had a look at the tacho, it was simply a case of the rev limiter wired incorrectly when I changed to shielded wire. All working happily now although I'm certain the rev counter is somehow lazy when I use the rev limiter output, responding slowly to fast blips.

Dashboard Mk2

Sunny Saturday afternoon, got some beer, got my power tools and got a nice bit of 6mm thick marine ply to make a new dashboard. First job - old dash off and remove all the dials and switches. Amazingly I managed to keep the loom intact although this will receive some attention to tidy up and rationalise. Here's everything removed from the old dashboard:

I used the old dash as a template and got to work with the jigsaw. Barely 10 minutes later an here's the new bit of wood just to check it fits. Spent a bit of time smoothing out the curve on the top of the dashboard as the old dash wasn't a smooth curve and was quite noticeable. This one is a lot better.

Marked out the gauge positions - note now only 3 gauges over the speedo. I'm ditching the ammeter as it wasn't even connected before, just there for show. The main reason for a new dash is for a better tacho position so I will temporarily fit the dash and the steering wheel then get the old bits of paper and strips of tape out to position it (hopefully better than on dash mk1).

Update Monday 14th:

Adhesive left to dry overnight then pop the gauges back in. Bit of re-wiring left to do now that I've removed a gauge. Even though the ammeter wasn't connected to the main power feed it still had a backlight which needs removing. Due to the tacho moving some wires now don't reach so a bit of wire chopping is required.

Dash for IVA

Just a couple of pics to show the solution for the radius requirement for the IVA. If the bottom of the dash is a hard edge it needs minimum 20mm radius so I cut a slot in a bit of 20mm O.D. aluminium tube and wedged it on the bottom of the dash. The tube will get covered in black vinyl when we get round to it.

Also, interestingly. it seems the gear lever is a lot further forward with a tremec box so if you are using the Dax dashboard rather than making your own you may need to check clearance to the dash of the gear stick when in 1/3/5th gear. This isn't a problem with the getrag box as the gear lever is miles away

Update 14/10/13 to add picture of lower IVA rail with a bit of vinyl around it. Doesn't look half bad, the vinyl is held on with some double sided trim tape and just needs tweaking a little where its rucked up.

Dashboard

Vinyl is a fabric and as such, the woman of the household made the vinyl covered dash. First job, assuming your marine ply dash is ready - cut vinyl roughly the right size.

Then, using lots of newspaper as not to ruin the floor, spray contact adhesive on the wood and the vinyl (in straight lines, 90° to each other as per instructions)

Wait 5 mins then slap the vinyl on the wood, then trim leaving enough to fold over.

Fit gauges

Fit switches, then do lots and lots of wire cutting and crimping.

et voila. One semi-authentic dash with not-quite-but-almost original layout. And wonky switches that aren't in a neat line (my fault). Disregarding the cost of the gauges and switches, total cost for dash was probably about £25 and took roughly 5 or 6 hours, most of that was head scratching whilst doing the wiring.

A bit of woodwork

A trip to B&Q and Screwfix for some industrial castor wheels, 18mm ply and some 4x2 (apologies for mixing imperial and metric units) and we now have a skateboard with a loading limit of 1000kg, ready to take the engine when it comes in a crate at some point in the next 2 weeks. 

More dash related jiggery pokery. Its a good job I bought a sheet of plywood large enough to make 2 dashboards as the first attempt wasn't very good. Even though we spent a good while carefully trimming the curve on the cardboard it was still nowhere near when the shape was transferred to the plywood. Mk2 is a lot better and I'll put a photo up when we have cut the holes for switches/dials.

The picture below is the offending connectors mentioned earlier, I couldn't get them to snap together so I binned them and got some high current Ford loom connectors, Ill update with a pic later. They are a bit excessive, in fact they are bloody enormous but they feel very secure when connected together so that's all that matters.