Gauages

Okay this part might seam a little crazy to some of you, but here we go. I wanted to keep the original cluster of gauges that came with the 1946-48 Ford dash, but with update gauges. I made a inquiry into having them done professionally, put it was more then I wanted to spend. We decided to tackle it our self and see what we could come up with. I had a old gauge that we dismantled to see what we could do with it and had test fitted it into the stock cluster. I wanted to do this before tearing into a new set of gauges. After playing around with the old gauge I was feeling pretty confident that we could make this work.

This is the stock cluster after taking the old gauges out and now have started to rebuild with the new gauges. Had to do some machine work to make the circle opening a little larger to accommodate the new gauges and made some bracket to hold them in place. We took the trim ring and glass off the new gauges and discarded them. There goes my warranty.  

Did some filing on the sides of the gauges to make a proper fit. 

The black rings had to be epoxy in place to hold the faces in. The original stainless ring and glass held the gauges together. Not picture is the stock glass and frame that protects and holds every thing together. 

The glass, frame, and trim piece all put together. 

Not the best picture, but this is the cluster installed into the dash. Looks pretty close to the stock gauges except you can see a little of the radius at the top. I'm very pleased on how it turned out and that we saved about two thousand dollars. Next we will fit the speedometer, tach, and clock.