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| The original ford gauges |
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| The Ford bezel with the center milled out |
Needless to say, the stock ford gauges are woefully inadequate
for a big rig of this nature. So rather
than tack on a few gauges with pop rivets and sheet metal screws I decided to
make a new dash pane. With everything integrated nicely. I decided I wanted to
have individual fuel gauges (one for each of the two tanks), along with a pyrometer,
temp gage, oil pressure of course the tach and speedo. The six smaller gauges
are Autometer’s GS line which I chose for the style of the gauge face as well
as the fact that they glowed green when illuminated. The 4K tach and the Speedo
are from Speed Hut and the speedo being GPS allowed me to not have to worry
about adapting a cable from the transmission nor and inaccurate speed reading
due to a change in tire diameter . after laying out the holes for the gauges,
Idiot lights and the 4 rocker switches (controlling the intake heaters, KSB
solenoid, manual cooling fan bypass, and fog lights) I milled it out on the VMC
from a piece of ¼” Aluminum. Then I had it anodized black. I laid out the
artwork in Illustrator but had a big fight with my laser engraver (who totally
F’ed up a large batch of client work and refused to make good) so I dusted off
the old 30K rpm air turbine and engraved the panel myself. The surface was
uneven and I didn’t have the proper engraving bit so the engraving came out a
bit uneven but here it is.
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| Gauges installed but not wired |
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