With the scuttle located accurately, we could cut and fit the 5-ply backing plate for the dash. This shows how little room there is above the steering wheel when using the AE-111 Corolla switchgear. There's no way I can fit the 100mm Toyota instruments in that space, so I'm sort of wishing I hadn't bothered getting the scuttle hump option, as it makes things more complicated for the aeroscreen. Anyway, I now know where the instruments can't go!

In this shot, you can also see the nice ali handbrake handle Ryan turned up.

Here are the instruments from the AE-111 Corolla halfcut. The tacho wasn't working for a while, but seems to be ok now. It's redlined at 8000 rpm, so I'm glad we can use it. I think the black and orange style is easy to read, and they also look pretty good. The speedo only goes to 180 and has 85000 klms on the clock, but they're minor problems.

We have decided to seperate the instruments, and mount them individually. This will give us more freedom in placement, but means we have to work something out for illumination and warning lights, as the warning lights and bulbs are mounted on the Toyota instrument panel backing plate, as shown in this photo.

This is the dash cut out and marked up roughly using a piece of scrap plywood to get the right dimensions.The instruments are mounted behind a 21.5 mm x 100mm inside diameter piece of PVC pipe. We painted the pipe black inside, and cut a lens from a CD jewel case. Ryan turned up the bezel from an old aluminium pulley, and this was glued to the lens inside the pipe.

Here is a closer view of the instrument surround for the tacho and speedo. I think it will look good against a carbon fibre background. The Toyota guages will be screwed to the dash using the protruding mounting holes. This should result in a nice tight fit.

The dash has been covered in carbon fibre composite, and it looks pretty good. There are a few flaws in the finish, but the overall effect is very nice. Unfortunately, I cut the holes for the smaller guages in the wrong place, i.e. immediately over the dash hoop. This resulted in less than 20mm back clearance for these instruments, short by about 30mm. D'oh! Instead of throwing everything away, we came up with a good workaround, which is to fit an ali panel over these three holes and fit the nine warning lights there. This has worked out well, as I was wondering where to put the lights. Now were to fit the other guages?

Ryan has been working away steadily on the dash wiring, and has done a great job. The large circuit board on the right is the Jaycar shift light kit, and the smaller one to it's left is the speedo corrector. We still have to calibrate these. In addition, Ryan has also developed a circuit for the seat belt warning light. Initially this was using a tuned circuit, but he eventually threw that out and used a 555 timer. It stays on for over 15 seconds, and is quite bright. I'm glad I've got someone to help me with all this stuff. He's spent a lot of time on this, with lots of fiddly little problems.

This is the finished dash, and I think it looks pretty good despite my stuff up with cutting the holes in the wrong place. Maybe I'll have another go at getting it just right after rego, maybe not. I'll be interested to see how the instruments hold up in service. I think the plastic lenses might shake loose, as they're held in with small amounts of superglue. The next step is to rig up some lighting for the instruments. In Queensland, you used to have to have dimming lights, but apparently that has now been dropped, so we can use LEDs.

The shift lights are *very* bright. I will buff the lens with some fine wet and dry to disperse the beam a little. There should be no problem viewing them in the daylight. I have set them up to go off at 7000, 7500 and 8000 for green orange and red respectively.

Here is the dash mounted to the scuttle. We have used 6mm stainless steel panhead bolts to mount the panel. I doubt that the Dept. of Transport will allow this, but we will fix a rubber bumper strip to the outside of the panel, so the mounting screws probably don't matter. Anyway, it looks pretty good, so I'm happy!

Another shot the instrument panel. We have tested the panel by getting in and out without scraping our knees. A big plus! I have speedo, tacho, fuel and water temp guages. I really need an oil pressure guage, but at least I have an oil pressure light., so maybe next year? The interior looks pretty basic, but we will work on it, and hopefully after rego, we will be able to improve the quality of the fittings significantly.

This shot shows the car with rubber padding around the dash as required for registration. The side mirrors are Honda motorcycle parts. Also visible is the stainless steel exhaust heat shield. The Westfield GRP panels show off their finish quite nicely here. It should look even better when painted.