The More, The Merrier

When rebuilding your classic truck the subject of the dash always comes into play. This month we will take a look at an enhanced dash pad that provides a mounting point for three gauges and an upgraded radio speaker. The '67-72 Chevy/GMC truck offered an instrument package in the early days that were very good but now you can make it better.

In restoring the dashboard in our Super Sub, a '72 Suburban, we have installed a new full-cover, padded-dash pad as part of the project but we thought there must be more we can do. (In a later issue we will show you how we upgraded the stock instrument panel, which included the addition of a tachometer.) So, we combined a clock and two gauges plus a wiring kit from Auto Meter Products, a Custom Autosound speaker, and a full-cover, padded-dash pad from Just Dashes.That's right, combining gauges and a dash pad. You are probably looking at your truck right now and saying how do you get gauges to adapt to a stock dash pad? Well, we didn't and we don't expect you too either. Just Dashes has introduced a new full-cover dash pad. Instead of using the stock or a replacement dash pad that only covers the wrap around area of the dash we opted for the new full-cover padded-pad from Just Dashes.

As with any dash pad, the old one must be removed. This can be a painstaking project, as you must remove dash appointments such as the radio and its speaker, air conditioning controls and vents, as well as the defroster vents. We also removed the instrument panel and glovebox, both easily accomplished. All this dismantling is necessary to get to the mounting studs and accompanying nuts on the stock pad.With the dash sheetmetal and mounting points exposed it's now time to prep the Just Dashes full-cover pad. The new pad not only covers the same area as the stock pad but also covers all the sheetmetal on the dash up to the base of the windshield and the full width. The new dash pad also has mounting studs but they used different holes than a stock pad.

The new pad will accept three 2 1/16-inch diameter gauges and has provisions for the two defroster vents and the center mounted OEM speaker. To fill out our new pad we went to Auto Meter and selected a clock, an engine temperature gauge, and a transmission temperature gauge to fill out the three center mounted and angled holes for gauges in the dash pad. We went for the these gauges since our truck came from the factory with the upgraded instrument package but none of these instruments were included.

We used the Auto Meter Traditional chrome gauges: a 250-degree transmission temperature; analog clock; and a 300-degree engine oil temperature gauge as well as senders. To this we also added a selection of 18-gauge electrical wiring from Auto Meter as well.

Since we did have the dash sheetmetal exposed we added the Custom Autosound Dual Voice Coil, 120-watt speaker which fits the OEM mounting point. The speaker is technologically advanced over its OEM predecessor as it has two channels and provided more cone area, affording cone base response. (We also added a Custom Autosound radio but more on that later.)

Follow along with the photos and we will show you some tips to making this installation less of a challenge and making sure your gauges are properly wired.