CarFreak wrote:
Quote:

Leeedy wrote:

From appearance of the photo included, it looks like the Bakelite factory air vents are still in place on the top of the instrument panel???? Eeeeek! I would very, very strongly recommend carefully removing these and storing them in a safe place-preferably bubble-wrapped in a box until your dash is back in place.

These vents are extremely brittle and will crack, chip, even shatter. And they are very, very tough to find. Very much so. I would have recommended they should have been the very first items removed from the dash if you were going to do a full pull-down. Remove them and store. You'll be glad you did-even if you have spares.

And if you have a whole extra factory A/C dash why not just use the bezels and gold screen from it?

The opening where the radio face comes through is cut wider and taller. The bezel and gold screen will cover up the cut area of this enlargement. However the mounting tabs would not be able to be bent in a manner where they would fasten to the frame, but only to the gold trim. I would have been okay with making that work, but...:

the holes where the radio knobs come through the dash frame have been enlarged. Enlarged to the point there is no way to ensure the radio will sit flush like the factory intended it to be. Which means the bezels would not sit flush against the gold trim once the radio is installed due to the radio not sitting flush against the back side of the dash frame. Furthermore, even if I was able to initially get the radio to sit flush with the back of the dash frame, there would be no way to guarantee that the radio wouldn't become dislodged over time. Yea I could weld in pieces to correct the issue, yea I could make washers to fit over the hex part of the radio knob areas, but why go through all that work and time when I have a perfectly good A/C dash that has to come completely apart anyway for the gold trim? What ever dash board frame I was going to use needed to be stripped down for paint anyway.