Ford F-1 Dashboard Transplant - Dashing Debonair

A peek through the glovebox door reveals the Vintage Air evaporator unit we mocked up earlier. We wanted to maintain an original, '50's era aesthetic to the interior so the evaporator was mounted nice and high up under the dash, sacrificing the glovebox in the process.

On the driver side, you can see that there's a bit more empty space to fill than there was on the passenger side.

As luck would have it, the strip we took out of the dash when it was narrowed was just right to fill the void and allowed us to maintain the ashtray, giving us a small storage space for fuses, spare change, etc.

To match the opposite side, the same end cap pattern was used for the driver side.

With the end cap tacked into place, a few relief cuts were made in the ashtray patch panel for us to be able to form the compound curve necessary for it to meet the end cap.

Those relief cuts were then welded up and a bit of hammer and dolly work was used to get the corner just right. A final patch panel was then made and tacked into place to finish up the area.

Here's a good shot of the corner and where the welds (albeit a bit shoddy!) were made.

To grind the welds, we used a die grinder with a cutoff wheel to get them fairly flat (a little secret shared by our buddy Cal Tanaka) before sanding them nice and smooth with a 120-grit sanding disc.

The corner turned out pretty nice and with a bit of body filler, will look great.

Here's the finished dash eagerly awaiting the return of the gauges from Classic Instruments. Not a bad upgrade from the relatively utilitarian, stock F-1 dash to a flashier '50's Pontiac number.