I had always planned on using a '51 Ford gauge cluster in my Chevy because it looks sooooo cool. Plus, it would be something new becuase I had never even heard of anyone trying to put a 51 Ford cluster in a '50 Chevy. Of course, now I know why. Fortuitously, tech week came just as I finished off the job. And maybe, just maybe, this time I'll make it in the tech archive. For some reason, none of my other tech post seem to make it in to the tech archive. There were some good posts, too. There was How To Chop A '50 Fleetline, and who could forget the cl***ic PCV Valve Tech Post not to mention minor hits like Seat Belt Tech and Taildragger Tail Lights. And ther are some others out there, too. So yeah, maybe I'll make it in this time, huh? Okay, down to business. 4 years ago I bought a 51 Ford cluster. The 51 Ford cluster screws into a pot metal bezel. I couldn't use that, so I thought that I'd get a 49/50 Ford dash and use that to mount the cluster. Easy, right? Right! I finally located a 49/50 dash a couple months ago and decided to get to work. I thought about using the Ford dash, but it was in rough shape and didn't have any of the stuff in it. Moreover, it was veeery different in shape than the chevy dash and it would have been hell to make it work. So, the plan was to swap out the clusters, and then figure out how to meld the two dashboards. As it turns out, the 49/50 cluster and the 51 cluster are NOTHING alike.
So, how do I make this work? I started from the outside and thought my way in. I layed out the bezel from the 49/50 dash, and then started putting the pieces from the 51 lens in place. They were all about 1/8" too big so I verrrry gingerly ground off the edges off all the wafer-thin parts using my eyeball and a bench grinder. I got the lens parts to fit, but the face of the gauge was pressed right up against the lens. The '51 had a spacer ring, but with the new setup it wasn't enough. Plus, I wanted to tunnel the gauge just a little. So, I decided to tunnel the 49/50 cluster. Since it is steel, I can weld to it. I eyeballed the amount of backset I needed, and made a filler piece. I used an air shear and cut off a 1/4" strip of sheetmetal. Then I wrapped the piece around my MIG bottle to get a circle started, and then looked around for smaller and smaller cylinders to help me form a circular band. When it was close, I cut it to the right length and started tacking. I would make a quick tack and then cool it with compressed air before moving on about an inch doing it all over. This took about 2 hours to complete, but I couldn't risk any warpage here. Then I sanded, bondoed, sanded, bondoed, and finally hit it with some flat black Krylon. This all took another couple hours.
Cool!! I'll be keeping an eye on this one, since I plan to do some tricky dash stuff in my '52. Plus, everything is spelled correctly and you even got to use the word "fortuitous"...puts you in the running IMHO...
Dude! Don't give away the ending! Okay, so the cluster fits in the bezel now. Now, how do I mount the thing and keep all the guts in? I made me a Frankenstein! Lot's of tiny cuts with a cutoff wheel, and then more nip and tuck with a sanding disc to get it to fit. To make sure I had the cluster centered and backspaced properly, I had to make the first two tack welds with the cluster installed. You can see through the holes that there is an old leather glove that I cut up to keep the gauge safe from burns. I removed the gauge after I got a couple of tacks in, and tacked around the perimeter. I didn't want to cut up pieces for the remaining holes, but needed a way to seal it, so I used caulk. Ghetto, I know. I just ran a little bead around the seam to seal it up and smoothed it out with my finger. No one is ever going to see it. Anyway, I hear that's how Chip Foose does it, so it's OK.
Now it was time to figure out how to put this little gem into my dashboard. I cut out the piece form the 50 dash I needed and started to mock up the job. I put in a call to my good pal MercMan1951 and asked him to come over and reality check me. Fortunately, I was able to get a photo of him in the middle of checking my reality. It's rare that you can capture something like that in the wild. I wanted to use a lot of the Ford dash, so I held the pieces up to each other to get a good feel for how it was going to go together, and I cut a nice big hole to make room. And then the pieces didn't fit together so good. And then I decided what what I needed was a rounded piece to go in there, much like the one I had just cut out. Cut, trim, cut trim... and then we figured out that it would work better if we flipped the Ford part upside down. Now it was starting to take shape.
But what about the gap at the bottom? There was an "eyebrow" left over from t******* the chevy dash, and "if you flip that over," says Kevin "it'll look really cool in that hole!" He was right! It would look really cool in that hole! Now I had to figure out how I was going to get the dash trim to fit. It used to **** up against the old Chevy speedo bezel, but I noticed that the outside ends had a nice beveled finish to them, so I flipped them over. Then I had to make "The Insanity Piece" that would meld the trim notch and the cutaway under the gauge. And then another for the other side. Note the bolts from the old column drop at the bottom of the dash. They anchor the swing pedal ***embly to the dash, so I drilled a couple of holes and welded them flush with the dash for a clean look. Oh, yeah, "Don't forget to save the Gene Winfield autograph!"
Needless to say, it only took a million years to weld all that stuff together and fill the extra holes and sand all those little weird crevases. Then I painted the dash, column, glove box and ashtray. I saved a couple of bucks at the paint store by buying a couple pints of PPG paint from the oops rack and mixing my own off-white color. Cost me 15 bucks. Dig the awesome shadow cast from that blob of ostrich **** on my windshield. Then I made a wiring harness for the dash, installed the cluster, and stripped the paint off of the dash pieces to reveal their chrome-y goodness. If my calculations are correct, adding that much chrome will shave a good half second off my E.T. Special thanks to DIRTYT for the cool radio delete plate I scored from him during one of our trades. I decided that it was important to have the odometer read "0000000" as well. So I took it apart. Did any of you guys know that there are a lot of really tiny pieces in there? One of them rolled off the bench and into oblivion. I took a picture so you would know what I was up against when searching for that little gear. Never found it. Fortunately I had the 49/50 cluster for parts! Maybe I'll do a tech on how to roll back your speedometer, for those of you that didn't go to school in Pontiac and might not know how. The lens for the gauge was cloudy and had some light scratches, so Kevin let me borrow some MacGuire's plastic polish. I had a 4" bufferwheel for a drill that I got from the hardware store. I put it in my drill press and shined up the lens. And finally, I put the old push****on start back in. I got a couple of push****on setups from DIRTYT and 49Fleetmaster and, combined with mine, was able to make one good one. It started up fine, but then it wouldn't shut off... exciting! I figured it out though. I moved the location of most of the dash knobs, so I had to drill holes and file notches and slim down switches to get them all to fit in. Lots of trial and error and nip and tuck. All in all I bet I have a good 40 hours and 125 dollars into it.
Yes. I believe that the same company made the internal workings of the speedometers for Chevy and Ford. As a matter of fact, the cable I'm using to hook it to my 350 Turbo is from an '80s Pontiac.
My guess is only people who really know '50 Chevies will notice. Which is fine. How about a Before and After pic ?
Awesome job man! I love how it came out. One question...what happened to the two-tone idea with the red?? Attached is an original-style 50 chevy dash for comparison. The devil is in the details...
MY GF says..."this is what I have learned from you car guys...It doesn't matter what model or make the original part comes from, all that matters is that if you can make it fit and look pretty you're ready to roll..." She is wise beyond her words. My belief about customizing is to make something look "right" and keep people guessing as to what you did to make it look that way... I think really good customizing is a combination of these two thoughts...and Marc's new speedo is a prefect example of this. TECH ARCHIVE MATERIAL!
The Jalopy Journal
