Dash Adventure (long)

Jim Magill · Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:44 am Post subject: Dash Adventure (long)

Just wanted to post some things to think about when replacing your dash. One thing to keep in mind when looking thru the bone yard for a new dash for your Elky, not all dashes is created equal. My son and I are working on a 1981 bare bones Elky, sweeping speedo, no air, 3 speed on the floor. The dash pad on this car was like most I'm sure, in a word, junk. There were at least 10 cracks and splits. You would open the glove box and it would fall onto the floor because the hinge on the bottom was broken off and you could hardly see the idiot lights thru the yellowed plastic over the gauges. As luck would have it we found a junkyard that had 1 and only 1 El Camino and low and behold it was fully loaded with air, round gauges, a tach and best of all, the dash pad was in perfect shape. $275.00 and 30 minuets later we were the proud owners of a "Most Excellent" dash. The first problem I ran into was the windshield wiper switch. The original switch was located along side the light switch on the gauge pod but the dash and gauge pod I got was from a newer model with the wiper switch on the turn single switch. What to do? Move the wiper switch (I haven’t done this yet) to a spot on the right side of the gauge pod. On to problem two. As I stated previously the original had a sweeping speedo with idiot lights and the new dash has round gauges and is newer. The new round speedometer is located a little left of center where the old one took up most of the gauge area from the center out. Not a big deal but you may/will need to re-route the speedometer cable under the dash to more easily plug into the back of the relocated speedometer. The other thing to remember at the junkyard is to get the plug that plugs into the back of the dash pod. The placement of the plug is the same but the wiring is different. I have seen on the net a cross reference where you can unplug a wire from the plug socket and move it to a new position for the new dash. I think splicing the new plug to the old harness using a wiring diagram for each dash may be easer. I don’t know, again I haven’t tried this yet. Number 3, if the new dash had air conditioning and the old dash didn’t, or vise versa; the duct work is NOT the same and cannot be used without replacing ALL the duct work. This includes the heater parts attached to the firewall. The only exception to this is the vents above the radio. Also if you are going from car without air conditioning and are using a glove box from a car with air conditioning, the glove box insides will not work. The cars with air have much more space behind the glove box and will not even come close to working on a non-air car. The last thing I can think of is the speakers in the dash. If you are replacing the original speakers with better ones, and lets face it who doesn’t want to, replace them in the new dash before you install it into the car. The new ones I have are two-way speakers with larger magnets and are taller then the old ones. There is little space to spare when it comes to removing and replacing them after the dash installed and trust me you’ll be glad you did. I’m sure a lot of this has been covered before in different posts but I just wanted to put it out there.
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1979 El Camino
1981 El Camino
2005 Mustang GT
1934 Chevy DB

Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.

spoonplugger · Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 9:58 am Post subject:

It's amazing you found a dash in good shape.
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86 caballero, 350 cid, TH350C

Jim Magill · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:27 am Post subject:

The junkyard Elky was a great find. The floor pans in ours were gone from the floor support back but the front was fine. The junk Ely was just the opposite. Ours had a bench seat but the junk one had either a split bench or buckets so we got the whole floor pan, seat brackets and all to replace ours. So yea, we were lucky!
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1979 El Camino
1981 El Camino
2005 Mustang GT
1934 Chevy DB

Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.

ElkyPete · Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:56 am Post subject:

We have Electrical Schematics for I think all models of El Camino here at ECC in case you didn't know.....

Here is the link

http://elcaminocentral.com/article-114-nested-0-0.html
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Home Site: http://www.elcaminoplace.com
1972 El Camino Custom 400
1976 El Camino Classic
1980 El Camino Super Sport
E-Mail: engstrvr@sbcglobal.net

Caballero78 · Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 8:39 pm Post subject: New Dashes

What do you think about the new dashes they make? I though somw one could give me the skinny on what ya'll think. Don

LOL not that I have ever got someone to respond yet but I see a light at the end of the tunnel, darn it's a train
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VROOM VROOM lets ride!!!!

Jim Magill · Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 2:26 pm Post subject: Re: New Dashes

zkman2002 · Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:48 am Post subject:

hey jim, dont know if you finished dash yet, but i just completed the idiot light to rally gauge swap over. you can achive this without cutting your dash plug wires. its fairly easy as the plug has numbers from 1 to 18. youll need to add 1 wire to #17 to the tach outlet on distributor. heres a link from www.maliburacing.com http://www.maliburacing.com/gauge_conversion.html also youll need to change your temperature sender and your oil sender. the wires come loose off the plug by using very small screwdriver to pop tab in on the plug side. also clean all contacts on plug with wires and ribbon on gauge pod. hope this helps.
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78 elky 350 375hp turbo 350