I started working on a new dash cover for my jeep. I thought about doing a CJ dash swap, but all but one of my gauges work, and the one that doesn't, just needs a new sending unit. So, I decided to just pull the plastic "dash cover" off, and see what I could come up with.

Here's what I have so far, I'll update this as I make progress.
Here's a side view, showing the profile of the new dash,


This is the overall lay out, for now, I'm just replacing the left and center sections. I may do something with the glove box later.


Here is the center section loosly set in place. You can kind of see how it sits much tighter to the profile of the gauges.


And here's a teaser shot of what the finished product will look like. I am planning to make a similar bezel for the tach, spedo, and lights above the colom.

Wow, that looks awesome!

That looks very nice! I'd like to do something similar on my chevy.

I made a little more progress, I got the center section mounted. I still need to attach the heater controls, and make the cutout for my switch panel (I'm going to take the one that used to be on the dash, and flush mount it just to the right of the heater controls.


I also got the drivers side pannel roughly fit into place.



And I made a bezel for my ignition switches and push button starter, and got those mounted in the drivers side pannel.

Not much more progress, but I did manage to get my switch pannel mounted. It was previously mounted on top of the dash pad, like this,


Now sitting snuggly in it's new home,

Just a little update,
I had been having issues with my headlight switch, sometimes I'd have to cycle the switch on and off several times to get the headlights to turn on. Simply cleaning the switch most likely would have fixed the problem, but I decided to put together another set of switches similar to my ignition switches, and just get rid of the stock headlight switch.
left switch = dash lights, center switch = park/running lights, right switch = head lights.


And I decided to move the CB. In it's previous location(which can be seen in the above pics, below the heater controls), it was a little difficult to reach the controls, and almost impossible to see the channel display.
I relocated it to the little cubby above the glove box.

I haven't made much progress on the dash itself, but after 5 years of owning this heep, I've decided that it's time to finally get the dash lights working. After adding the toggles for the lights, and still not having dash lights, I figured there was an issue with the ribon circuit behind the gauges.
So, I decided to just bypass it all together. Here's how I'm doing it,
step 1: remove the bulb holders from the gauge cluster, and remove the bulbs.


step 2: remove the contacts from the bulb holder.


step 3: drill two small holes through the back of the bulb holder(I think I used a 1/16" bit).


step 4: The contacts already have a hole in them, use this hole to solder on a length of wire.


step 5: feed the wire into the bulb holder, and out through the new holes in the back.


step 6: repete for the ramaining bulb holders, and reinstall them in the gauge cluster.

Then just wire them all together, and hook them up to the switch.

It only took 5 years, but I finally have dash lights agian!!!