Restoring A 1966 Pontiac GTO's Dash - Dashing Renewal

After installing the gauges, we reinstalled the heater control assembly, the heater cables, the dash to pedal mount support bracket, and the grounding brack-ets for the wiper and headlight switches.

The new veneer insert for the heater control face needed a bit of work to fit correctly, as did the main veneer insert. For both, we "adjusted" the inserts slowly and carefully using small hobby wood files until we were happy with the fit.

Not risking all our restoration work to questionable 40-year-old harnesses, we sprung the big dough for all-new reproductions, including a complete M&H dash harness (www.wiringharness.com). The pictures we took earlier of the unassembled dash helped us get the new harness in place correctly, as did labeling each wire we removed. Because the M&H harness is an exact copy of the original, all the wiring lengths, colors, and connectors were identical to it, which made installation really easy. The other bonus is the new dash harness came with a new fuse block, so you can actually read the fuse information on it again.

And here's the final product-an incredible improvement over what we started with. We can't wait until the rest of the restoration is far enough along that we can actually put the dash back in.