Tidying up, and paving way for a rewrite

I like my analogue dashboard, and am very tempted to keep it when I retire. However, getting access to it has always been a pain. Furthermore, the interior of the engine bay from all the mods made previously was starting to get a little tatty, so I’ve solved two birds with one stone. Below, you can see many holes for things like fuse-banks, heater access etc. There is no heater anymore, and fuses/relays will be replaced with solid state relays (SSRs).

Urgh – not made of carbon.

And here we are part of the way through. I’ve trial fitted the panel and fully fitted the rivnuts as fasteners. The plan is the panel can be removed from the engine bay in a minute or two and then full access can be had to the back of the dash. Not every rivnut went in easily – some had to fit over what was an open hole and required small support pieces. However, the plan was always blind-ending fasteners.

Here it is from the back – a much better approach (I think) and you can see the black patch-panels I had to bond in to support the fastener.

Finally below is the finished article. Tidies it up quite well. Added a little weight but I can live with that for the convenience bought. The bottom panel is fully bonded in – I couldn’t see any advantage to making it demountable. The panel to the right with the gaping hole is also going to be relieved and replaced – similar on the left.

Feed the attention-whore