Last week, my nephew Nick came to visit for the weekend. I wasn’t planning on putting him to work (a good friend of mine warned me to not keep him out in the garage all weekend…) but my new Gas-N stainless 351 based headers showed up and there was no way I wasn’t grabbing that opportunity. After all, if I can’t trust a C-17 USAF crew chief, who can I trust?
We did have to work a few of the holes to get things to line up, but then it went straight on. Here’s the beautiful gap I’d been looking for all along on the drivers side…
The passenger side is now off at the exhaust shop having the O2 sensor mount welded on.
Next up is a job I’ve been putting off for too long. The expense of messing this up is pretty high, and the appearance needs to be very good. The Dash. I cut the holes for the gauges using a circle cutter in my drill press at the lowest speed. Man, it made some noise and what looks like pounds of shavings. But it worked. I glued down the 1/8″ foam and though it had a few wrinkles from being stored wrong, I figured the leather would smooth right over top of that. I was wrong.
So it all got ripped back off. Trashed that piece of leather and of course, the foam.
Second try went much better. Got my Speedhut custom gauges installed along with the horn button and the indicator lights (those are for L&R turn signals and High Beams). Check out the speedo and tach… both say BOSS 427 in them. The leather is left long on the top to fill any gaps between the dash and the body when it is installed. The empty hole at the bottom is for the ignition switch which is wired into the main harness. The 1/8″ foam worked very well, as the dash has some cushion to it, but not so much as the gauges look sucked in. I really like the look. Nice n classy, but serious. And fun. 🙂
On the back, I started the wiring. Everything will be plugged in, as well as individual gauges will be removable for maintenance. I should be able to remove the whole dash in about 15 minutes to access anything in there that I need.
Still have to run some individual wires for the horn and indicator lights, then everything except the white sensor plugs will go into Molex connectors, much as I did the center switch console.
Back at it this evening as I continue to work my way towards first engine start…