"custom" instrument/gauge panels

My search foo is not doing so well today. I'm going to be building some instrument panels to fit (as best as I can make them) into the center console area of my SC300.

1) What plastics are people using? ABS? HPDE? Is anything particularly good/bad? HPDE seems fairly inexpensive. As this is going in the interior, it's not going to see much extremes of heat or gunk (oils, solvents, etc)

2) What thickness? I am thinking 1/8?

3) What kind of tools are you using for making holes/boxes/etc to fit stuff? Simple jigsaw and drill type stuff, or anything specialized?

Thanks!

I've found the a coping saw works real well with interior plastics.

what kind of hole is it going into? you can find three hold gage panels that are made to fit into single DIN radio slots

The car really doesn't have any DIN slots anymore. Most of the factory dash/interior is missing. I have some great mounting points to attach to, but there's no factory radio cage or anything like that.

All the custom car show / street rod / import tuner guys use wood, actually.

I've never seen a race car with a wood panel in it...

Depends on the location. In terms of digging up scrap stuff. I've used old license plates, and cut up old totes and tool boxes.

I lucked out and ended up with a 4'x4' sheet of 1/8" carbon fiber to make lots of little panels out of.

I also built a cool relay/fuse panel with it too, just can't find any pics.

Hacksaw, drill, and a file seem to work just fine for cutting/shaping.

thoraxe wrote: I've never seen a race car with a wood panel in it...

I've seen many. Thaere's nothing wrong with wood. The right stuff is light, strong, and durable. Plus you can make it any shape you want. Most people cover the wood structure with a felt or microfiber suede or paint it. I have a buddy with an LS1 RX7 that stained it on purpose (to match his equally stained wood front splitter).

Heck, most race cars through the mid-60's had their entire dashboard made of real wood!

In reply to Javelin: So what is the "right" stuff when talking about wood panels for race cars?

I was just expecting someone to say "oh use this plastic panel, get it at blahblah"... le sigh!

12"x12"x1/8" black abs - amazon - 4 sheets for $20. Add holes for gauges, you can add mounting tabs with a soldering iron (carefully). - go visit the you toobs for plastic or abs welding, you can shape/drape it with a heat gun.

I have some gauges hidden in my Barracuda's glovebox. Made the panel out of some scrap plexiglass that lying around. It's a flat rectangle with some angle brackets tying it to the original liner mounting holes. Hardware is hidden and I painted it with some textured black spray paint.

Cutting plexi with a jigsaw works, but get one of the grit blades and try to find the right speed combo. Too slow and you get nowhere. Too fast and the plastic fuses back together.

If I were doing it today I'd probably make a panel out of scrap aluminum and paint it up the same way. It's light and easy to shape.

In a race car interior I'd prefer metal over plastic. If I remember correctly, ABS gives off some nasty gasses when it burns.

If you have a metal surplus or scrap metal place near you, get the metal there. Usually a good selection of sizes and gauge to choose from. We made a rear firewall for a Mustang out of some 1/16" aluminum. Been using the leftover scrap to make all sorts of brackets, tabs and whatnot for the car.

The local box hardware store is probably the most expensive place to find it with a very limited selection.

Lotta scrap places around! Also got a Grainger and an Aircraft Spruce and several others. Aluminium sounds good except that it is somewhat conductive, so I would need to be really careful with how things are mounted, wired, wrapped and insulated. But it might be easier to work with.

I used 1/8" thick ABS for these

and on my challenge car I used a rain gutter that I bent, stripped and polished for a sweet aluminum panel. No pics right now.

In reply to thoraxe:

I'm told that balsa works quite well and oak, too. Stay away from pine and composites (glued together dust like plywood).

I had the same question as well actually. I wanna use wood for a dash in the z, stained to make it match the steering wheel.
glad to finally see what kinds of wood to use and what to avoid!

hole saw

If you want small pieces of plastic, look up "plastics" in your local yellow pages. First, they have great information. Tell them what you want to do, they'll help you decide what to do it with. They'll have a big bin of cut pieces that they'll sell for next to nothing. When I needed some UHMW plastic for sliders for the race car, I got a big chunk for about 15% of what it would have cost to buy at normal prices.

Plus, when I walked in asking for a particular plastic to use as a spring spacer, they listened to what I was going to do and recommended something different. The "internet way" of building these spring spacers is to use cheap cutting boards, but for the same price I got custom-cut spacers out of a better material and all I needed to do was give them the dimensions.