dash gauges continued

 It was a decently productive weekend even with the hot weather. Normally the garage is cool on the verge of being too cold, but the hot sticky weather didn't make working conditions overly pleasant.

Anyway, first step, a box for the gauges;

The tabs on the two sides were split to go round the metal bar underneath the dash. The lower tab was drilled to screw it into rivnuts under the dash, the upper tabs got rubber pads glued on so they sat against the underneath of the bodywork and provided some stability.

Once that was built up I could mark the relevant locations for cutting;

Then a first cut;

Looks like even my usually accurate measuring wasn't good enough here, so I had to trim back with an offset;

You can see the original blue lines under the actual cutouts. After that the masking tape came off to reveal the final effect;

I'm happy with the speedo and rev counter, but the smaller gauges don't really work for me. They're not in the right place and they're too close together. I think I'm going to merge the two, and create a 'pill shaped' frame that links them together. I also need to make it slightly higher as they're also misaligned!

On to the fascia. I've been back and forth on this more times than I can remember. I did want to just have the small rounded edge, the rules being that if it's padded then it can be a smaller edge. But after a bit of research it turns out that 'padded' means that the inspector should not be able to get to a hard surface. Overall this meant something like yoga mat or similar thick material. Given that it would have to be across the entire surface and add at least half an inch, it just wasn't going to be possible. 

So once again I've flipped back to the 19mm radius requirement. I've got hold of some 21mm quarter profile as well as 3.5mm ply. I'll build the dash up from those, then cover with leather.

First step, mask off the area;

I want it to be 10mm down from the top, it needs to extend below the lower edge, and I want it to have a partial curve on either end. 

The first cut didn't go too well;

I did it to include the curve, but that plywood is not going to bend at all. Sort of expected but still disappointing. I cut lengths of either end then it went on quite nicely;

For reference I then cut out the gauge holes, remembering to move the smaller gauges up a bit;

Of course I need to trim back the body a bit but I think combining the two will work well. 

The next jobs are;

1. 3D print some bezels, as well as the cylinders to meet the gauges. And I also need to apply the glass to those. 
2. I will also 3D print the end curves to make it look like how I want. I did think about bending wood, perhaps some aluminium, but I think a plastic print will be easiest as it's just a single curve. 
3. The bottom edge needs the quarter profile glued to it.
4. The whole thing needs covering. Ooh, that reminds me, I need to make the holes bigger otherwise I won't be able to wrap the leather round. It's about 2mm thick so I need the holes about 2mm bigger.

The other thing I need to do is sort of the depth. Measuring from the surface of the wood to the dial face shows the speedo is 22mm deep, the rev counter is 24 and the smaller dials are 26mm. Which means the whole thing is twisted. I can see the gap here;

I can't tell whether it's the bodywork that isn't straight, the bracing which isn't straight or the gauge box that isn't straight. The solution is the same though, I need to add a bracket to pull the bodywork on to the gauges. Even clamping it up I still have 22mm on the speedo, 23mm on the rev counter and 24mm on the small gauges, but at least it's not as noticeable. I'll need to do that before I do anything major with the fascia though, otherwise I risk other issues. 

The fascia then needs to be attached to the body. I was going to just glue it, but then I thought maybe velcro would be good for maintenance? But then I remembered speaker grilles, and the pins they use. They're not expensive, just rubber pins that press fit. I reckon around 8-10 fixings across the full length will work fine. Glue them to the wood, drill and fit the receivers in the body, job done. I don't see it being an IVA issue because many production cars have similar 'press fit' parts. Velcro on the other hand would be very questionable, particularly as the manual specifically excludes double sided tape.