73-87 recessed gauges with BIGBLOCK73'S brackets

[menace121978]

well thanks to Jeff's brackets i finally got the gauges mounted! as a few of you know i went with the 5" tach & speedo and the smaller 2 1/16th" fuel, oil, volt, & temp autometer ultra-lite II LED gauges. the reason i went with the smaller gauges is because the 2 5/8th gauge face seemed to large for my stock bezel. i didn't want to cut on the bezel itself either and the smaller ones worked out perfect.

i received Jeff's kit in the mail and was very surprised at the quality of the brackets. He included the 3 main brackets and 4 pieces of aluminum stock that have to be bent and screwed onto the bezel. he also includes 4 nuts and bolts. installing these brackets was very easy. i only needed a 11/64th drill bit and drill, a punch, screwdriver, epoxy, and a vice.(i actually made a vice with 2x4's) but thats an entire different write-up! i took a ton of pics and i'll do my best to explain most of them.

i had glued my gauges in before i got Jeff's brackets. ITS NOT RECOMMENDED OR NECESSARY!! i had to drill out the slots on 2 of the brackets because my glue job was slightly crooked. that is another great problem solved with these brackets... they will align and center the gauge faces perfect!

here i used the nuts that came with the gauges as a spacer to raise the brackets up away from the negative nut stud on the gauge.



as you can see i left the trim rings on the larger 5" gauges. they fit around the ring on the bezel very snug.


these are the pieces of aluminum that you will have to bend. (you only need 2 of the 4) Jeff threw in the extras incase i messed up the 1st go around.

here i cut 1 in half so i could bend and trim to size easier.

[menace121978]

here i drilled all the holes for the bolts with the 11/64th bit



heres the bracket bolted down

on this side i just epoxied the bracket. not enough room to get a bolt there.

[menace121978]

i bent the aluminum stock up and around for the small gauges. this takes some time and patience to get right. i ended up using spacers and ran all the diagonal brackets under the gauge brackets that way the gauges could be removed without any trouble if the need arises.


i epoxied the diagonal brackets down onto the bezel.

[menace121978]

you can see the nuts i used as a spacer so it holds the gauges down with just enough force to hold them.

here's the gauges all mounted. they are PERFECT!!!

[menace121978]

here's some of the finished product

[menace121978]

more...

[menace121978]

last ones for now