47-55.1 stereo install in AD cab, my ideas

[leegreen]

and final result

[Klorne]

Awesome, thanks for all the pictures and write up. I have an old delete plate and piece of dash, so I'm going to play with it and see if I can make something work. I'm thinking that finding the right pivot point might be the key.

[leegreen]

yes, the pivot is the key so the door rotates around the edge of the head unit and is flush when closed. I only showed the final stage of CAD model, there were a few iterations thumbtacked to a mock up drawing until the pivot was right.

I should mention that my head unit is mounted on top of a flat platform I built behind the dash. Held down with zip ties. It only weighs about as much as a pack of cards. This leaves the sides open so my hinges work. If you need to side mount your head unit the inner hinge will need to be a skinny C shaped thing like the ashtray picture.

[dsraven]

Some more modern cars use a little shock absorber to help with slow open and close of glove box doors. Maybe you can use something like that. Plastic non gas charged thingies

[leegreen]

....I'd planned a little knob to pull the door open, but it wasn't needed. if you push near the top edge with first finger it will open enough to flip up the bottom edge with your thumb

[leegreen]

Originally Posted by dsraven

Some more modern cars use a little shock absorber to help with slow open and close of glove box doors. Maybe you can use something like that. Plastic non gas charged thingies

if you were doing something larger you might need that. This works quite nicely with a smooth action with just metal on metal. I could see this wearing out eventually and getting loose but it has several months use now over 2 summers with no issue. Plan A if it gets loose is to bend the inner hinge a tad for more interference.

[Klorne]

My plan is to put a little cubby in the stereo hole and have the flip up door on it. Not going to have a stereo. Well, not a head unit anyways. Going with a Bluetooth amp under the seat, so nothing in the dash.

[leegreen]

wow, looks like you should be able to cnc some goodness to fit!

[Klorne]

If I only had a cnc machine, lol. By the way, that's not my dash. From a company called lsfab, they make a bunch of knick knacks for these old trucks.

[Klorne]

Leegreen, I really like your overhead gauge pod. I've been looking online for ideas to do something like that, but all the ones I've seen look like they've taken an overhead console out of a modern truck and bolted it to the roof of their old truck. Just looks out of place. Yours looks like it belongs there. I would love to see the finished product. I'm sure there was a lot of measuring, cutting, bending, re-measuring, re-cutting, re-bending... lol.

[leegreen]

'finished' ? we don't use that word around here.

Here is the current state of 'good enough' that got me through the last couple summers.
I need to do a headliner, door panels, rear cab panel to start to think of the interior as finished

[Klorne]

How do you find the gauge placement? Are they easy to glance up at? I'm putting a turbo in my truck, so I'll have a few extra gauges like oil pressure, wideband and boost. And an extra couple of lights would be nice too.

[leegreen]

The gauges are easy to see, just above the mirror. Ideally you'd angle them all towards the driver so the faces were perpendicular to the line of sight, but that makes the metal working a lot more - interesting. And this has worked just fine, I don't feel compelled to change it.

I have not run any interior sunvisor, I have one on outside of cab. Interior visor might not look good with this console? I have not held one up to consider it so far.

There is not a ton of room up there, 4 gauges probably would have started to run out of room between the console and truck Sheetmetal for the gauges. You could make it deeper but that would start to make the cab seem smaller and bring the gauges too close perhaps.
The cable capacity of the A pillar is limited as well, i think I have 6 or 7 14-16g wires in one of them and it was starting to get tight pulling the last up.

The little LED lights turn on independently, each has a switch. They give about enough light to see the dash, and maybe spot something you dropped. The OEM cab light with 12V bulb is very bright, easily read a book / map.