Not A Duster's Most Excellent Progress

Thank you sir.

I'm gonna finally have some new stuff to put up here these weekend. I actually gotta weekend off and wifey is heading to the farm for the weekend.

So I gots two whole days to do what I please with...:giggedy:...I plan to spend 'em out in the garage.
 
Well - wifey cancelled her trip to the farm, but I still spent the bulk of the weekend in the garage, doing car stuff.
Much of it was pretty mundane, like routing wiring harness and such, so I won't bore you with that, but there was a couple of projects that might be of interest.
If you are at all a "keep it original" type or the sight of hacked metal affects you in an adverse manner, I suggest you go not further in this thread...:D
I have been struggling with the whole car stereo issue for a while - matter of act, purchasing this car stereo is what ultimatel led to the Dart Sport's demise and put this car into my possesion.
However, the Demon was radio delete. That meant a special passenger side fender and a block off plate on a pristine, uncut dash. I had convinced myself that I did not want to hack the dash because of this, and devised a couple different underdash mounting things for the CD player.
Trouble is, the CD player was never meant to be mounted underdash and it skipped and performed poorly when the car was being driven. Not to mention the simple fact that having to look down to adjust the thing while driving did not impress me much.
So during one of the many mental conversations I have with myself when I'm trying to make a decision, I finally convinced myself that I had already welded in subframe connectors, cut a big hole in the floor for the four speed hump & thrown most of the factory interior away, how bad could be cutting a hole for the stereo really be?
Of course things got out of hand from there, as I decided that I really didn't like looking down to monitor my trio of guages either......
 
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I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Custom without being too "ricey."

They are cheapy Canadian Tire gauges, but still better than nothing I guess. The Autometer beveled rings tilt 'em towards the driver's seat so they are easier to read at a glance.

The stereo is much better there as well. There is a preamp/parametric eq/crossover that will still go under dash. But it does not need to be constanltly adjusted, so I'm OK with that.

While I was at it, I mounted an accessories - specific fuse box with it's own 30 amp feed from the battery. $4.99 at Princess Auto's surplus dept. Of course I had to hack some more holes for the cable and the guage senders through the fire wall....
 
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Finally, the battery cables.

A lot of the stuff I post here involves fixing up & refurbishing stuff on a budget to make it look new or at least better. I hope this helps some folks, 'cuz well I can't afford to replace everything & I'm sure many others can't as well.

The battery cables looked awful. Aftermarket ones don't fit right and resto-correct pieces are very expensive.

$8.00 worth of heat shrink tubing in Red & Black plus some new terminals makes a huge improvement. Not like new - but good enough for a driver at the local cruise nite.

Before & after/after in these 3 pics:
 
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Feakin sweet! :giggedy:

Glad you chose that route for the stereo, much safer! :D


I hope I can make my truck's under hood that neat & tidy. :)
 
As a rule I tend to lean towards the "as built", but I really like what you did with the dash. :2thumbs:

Nice improvement on the battery cables too, but that funky battery hold-down won't cut it.[smilie=g:
 
I've got a couple of those kind of hold downs and they aren't bad.

Gonna be slowly converting to gel batteries anyways so corrosion will not be such a problem.
 
68R/T said:
As a rule I tend to lean towards the "as built", but I really like what you did with the dash. :2thumbs:

Nice improvement on the battery cables too, but that funky battery hold-down won't cut it.[smilie=g:[/quote] Same here but that looks great! Looks like a masterpiece!:giggedy::clap:
Click to expand...
 
Thanks guys. It was a good day's work.

68: I've never one to be too concerned about keeping things "as built." But it sure was hard to cut those holes in the dash.

I'm glad I did now but it was a tough decision to make.

I am still very happy with the colour, but the more time I spend with the car, the more I realise just how badly I was screwed on the paint. Not only is there orange peel and pock-marks in the paint, but I'm starting to notice an awful lot of dirt imbedded in the paint. Being that the bodywork & paint is the one area I chose to have "professionals" do rather than attempting it myself, it's starting to feel like an insult.

Gonna be some real interesting "paint by" signs on the car at shows & cruise nites if they don't deal with it to my satisfaction.
 
Thats why I'm trying to teach myself how to do it 'cuz there is only one person round here I would trust to do it but it would cost me about $5,000-$8,000 just for body prep (minor bodywork) and paint. :P

But his work is amazing.

Hope yah get it sorted out Bruce!
 
That looks good. The angled bezels are a neat idea. Did you keep the slugs you cut/drilled out so you can weld them back in when you want to go back to original? :D
 
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