Well, I am finally down to the last fun fabrication project for the wagon. My goal here is to update the dashboard with the new Dakota Digital gauges in the existing gauge holes in the dash. Modify the heating controls from the 1956 Dodge to work with my Vintage Air Super GenII A/C and Heater/Defroster.

The first decision point that I needed to make was where was I going to install the A/C outlets in the dash. The original dash had a clock delete plate in the middle of the dash and next to it was the round and similarly styled ashtray. A little bit of work with a burr on my die grinder opened the dash holes enough to take a couple of A/C eyeball style vents. On the driver side of the dash I had removed the old push button control for the PowerFlyte transmission, so my plan there was to use the die cast push button housing as a template to make up a sheet metal mount for a matching eyeball vent to the ones in the center of the dash.

The problem was what to do with the passenger side. My 1st thought was to do something similar to the housing that I was making for the driver’s side. Unfortunately the dash is not symmetrical and between the glove box door and the curve of the dash, the resulting piece that I mocked up using card board looked down right dumb. While I was pondering the design, I kept glancing at the area behind the dash on the passenger side of the wagon. In another unique design, Chrysler had cleverly placed the defroster vent inlet right where the A/C outlet needed to go, and to make matters worse I am running the A/C condenser and evaporator lines along with the heater inlet and return lines in the same area and ….. drum roll… the computer and all of its wires and relays along with all of the fuse panels are located in the same area. I have a car as big as the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier and I am out of room! Groan….

Plan B for the passenger side is to buy a below dash vent housing, which looks like merde (French). I am still looking for something that I can build in that wont look like a piece of add on merde.

Big as a Whale and No Room!

Well after all of that I went back and installed the new RetroSound radio which fits nicely in the Dodge’s front panel hole. The chrome bezel is for a 1955-56 Chevy. The dash hole is the same size as the Dodge – go figure! Since the A/C evaporator is mounted directly behind where the radio sits in the dash, there was no room to fit it. Fortunately the RetroSound design is such that the control knobs are connected to the radio electronically instead of physically as in older designs. The other nifty design feature of the RetroSound is that the control head, can be removed and mounted independently from the amp. There was a good 3 to 4″ of cable between the two pieces so that I could mount the amp vertically to the original plate that the speaker was mounted to. All in all a nice clean install. I am ordering a power antenna to mount in the driver’s front fender. The radio has a control line to automatically raise and lower the antenna when the radio is turned on. I also ordered speakers from RetroSound as well. More to come latter about them.

When I bought the Vintage Air system, I bought both types of controls rotary and slide. The rotary controls for heat/cooling/defrost fit nicely in the the old Defrost switch position. The fan speed control like wise fit nicely in the old Blower control position. The heat level rotary control fit nicely where the old dash light dimmer control was – I made a new hole on the other side of the steering column to mount the new gauge light dimmer control. All that was left was to figure out a neat way to use the original Warm – Cool dash control to operate the cooling level of the A/C. Fortunately I had kept the original cable that operated the flapper control in the old heater and was able to adapt the new slide control to it quite easily. I did have to make up a mounting plate for the slide switch in a location fairly close to the evaporator. All in all it ended up looking pretty decent!

The only thing left was to enlarge the dashboard holes to accept the new gauges. To finish off the look of the new speedometer/tach gauge I modified the original die cast chrome eyebrow that fit between the old gauge and the dashboard. I still need to finalize the location of the Dakota Digital control module and also for the module that displays the gear selection on one of the speedo displays. I will figure that out when I refit the dashboard to the wagon so that I can fabricate the mounting plates for the fuse panels and relays behind the glove box door.

New Controls and Gauges

Once all the gauges and controls were taken care of, I made a new A/C outlet housing out of sheet metal, welded it up and made up some nut plates to mount it to the dashboard in the same position where the old push button control was mounted. With a fair amount of fine sanding and filing I was able to get the piece to fit the dash fairly well. I will coat the mount with filler and do the final fit with it prior to paint.

At Least The Driver Will Be Cool!

Looks like I have some more work for Royal Plating in Tucson. The die cast speaker grill could use a bit of freshening up, and also the die cast eyebrow that goes over the speedometer and the knob for the cowl vent which I had forgot to pull for the last plating run. The interesting part will be the little Dodge Forward Look emblem that was mounted on the radio speaker grill. I have removed every badge from the car that mentioned Dodge – you cant believe how many folks think the wagon is a Chevy or Studebaker…, anyway the little Forward Look Dodge emblem was gold plated at one time, I am going to see if RJ can re-plate it gold for me, if not it will be chrome. Since it is the only reference to Dodge on the whole car, I think it would be nice if it were a bit blingy.

The Last Parts For Plating