Art & Inspiration Cleaning up a '40 Ford dash

joel · Nov 26, 2024

50Fraud said: ↑

You may be familiar with my phantom '40 convert, built by Don Dillard of Highway 99 Hot Rods a few years ago, and shown in my avatar.

If I had been building the car from a parts bin, I would probably have used a '41 dash, which I think is simple and elegant. But the car that I bought still had its '40 dash in it, which is deservedly a very popular design, so I thought I'd just clean it up a bit.

Here's a stock '40 Deluxe dash. Too bad about the color on the heater:
View attachment 5132432
...and here's a '40 Standard dash.
View attachment 5132460
The differences are these:
Deluxe is painted 2-tone, Standard is solid color.
Instrument clusters are totally different. I think the Standard cluster is richer looking.
Major chrome lines on the radio grille are extended all the way across the Deluxe dash.
Deluxe steering wheel is 2-tone, and uses a different horn ****on.

And here's the dash in my car, which uses elements of both Standard and Deluxe:
View attachment 5132477
You can see that we used the full-width Deluxe chrome trim, but deleted several details that are present on the stock Deluxe dash: radio, 2 ashtrays, clock, and glovebox ****on/lock. We painted it in the same 2-tone layout used on the Deluxe, but used 2 metallic grey shades similar to colors I'd seen on a '50 Olds.

To accommodate a new AM-FM radio, Don built a nice generic sheet-metal housing that fits below the dash, leaving the top of the dash uncluttered.

The instrument cluster was made by a guy here on the HAMB (sorry, I've lost his name): it's a Standard cluster, which has a gl*** face and a nice chrome trim surround. The speedo is replaced by one from a '60s Plymouth; the speedo graphics suit the whole dash better than Ford's original design:
View attachment 5132488

Some additional details: I really like the mechanical look of the '40 steering column and shift linkage, so we retained all of those, but chrome plated everything. I chose SoCal Speed Shop's replica '49 Ford dash knobs, which are just simple chrome spheres. Don found a stainless ball in the McMaster-Carr hardware catalog to use for a matching-but-larger shift knob.

None of these tweaks were really necessary, and in some cases were extravagant, but I thought that the handsome Ford dash would benefit from some simplification. I'm pleased with the way it all turned out, and all credit is due to Don Dillard and his guys for pulling it all together.
Click to expand...

I like it. The 2-tone silver is cl***y and the double trim stripes really add to that.

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Art & Inspiration Cleaning up a '40 Ford dash

joel
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from Osceola, In

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Art & Inspiration Cleaning up a '40 Ford dash

joel ALLIANCE MEMBER from Osceola, In

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joel
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from Osceola, In