fbpx
 

SUPER CHEVY Article On How To Install Analog Dashboard Gauges on a 1965 Chevelle

SUPER CHEVY Article On How To Install Analog Dashboard Gauges on a 1965 Chevelle

SUPER CHEVY Article On How To Install Analog Dashboard Gauges on a 1965 Chevelle

View The Full Article on SuperChevy.com

Like a rolling stone … back in 1965, when Bob Dylan first sang about an uppity young lass that rode on a chrome horse with her diplomat, the instrument panel on the recently introduced 1965 Chevelle was a chrome-plated wonder from one end to the other. A wonder in the sense that half a century later one wonders what the designers and engineers at GM back then were thinking.

There’s nothing quite as irritating as climbing behind the wheel of a classic ’65 Chevelle, powered with a high-performance drivetrain, just to discover the stock instrument panel packed with idiot lights and poorly lit gauges is still in place. Add 50 years to the mix and it’d be a wonder if anything still works.

Such was the case for our buddy Jason Baucher’s ’65 Chevelle bought from another friend in our circle of fast friends about 10 years ago. Gone is the stock 283, under the hood these days there’s a late-model center-bolt 350 with a bigger four-barrel carb and a lumpy cam, with great-sounding dual exhaust. But there’s never been any way to know how much oil pressure, how hot, how many volts, or how high the 350 was revving. And to make matters worse, even if the stock Chevelle instrument panel was packed full of gauges instead of warning lights, their poorly lit faces were impossible to read. There was too much glare in the daylight, and not enough light at night.

From the earliest days of the automobile, the installation of supplemental gauges into, on, or around the stock dashboard hasn’t been all that rare of an occurrence, but it wasn’t until 2002 when Classic Dash pioneered the use of molded ABS composite that there was a clean alternative to supplant the stock dashboard entirely. Classic Dash’s new production method allowed designing a dash panel that blended with original Chevelle three-dimensional styling, plus… READ MORE

No Comments

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

[]