Tell me how to build a tach/vac

[nu2-72]

I know of 4 different dash possibilities. There may be more.
Gauge, gauge with tach, gauge with vac and gauge with tach and vac.

I have a tach dash and would like to add a vac gauge. I know that the tach dash does not have the hole punched for the vac gauge. This is difficult I hear.

Is it easier to use a vac dash and add the tach or how would you do it?

[john]

If you buy the vacuum guage kit from one of the board venders it comes with all of the needed parts.
John

[StingRay]

You either need to get the inner bezel with the correct holes or graft another hole from a doner where it can't be seen when it's all assembled. To be correct you'd need a lens with vacuum on it as well or if you like just polish it clear. I personally grafted the Vacuum part of the lens into my tach lens. It was BIG job but it was 10 years ago when repro stuff was not available and I had Zero money to spend

[HuggerCST]

I built mine using a tach dash. I replaced the lens with a new vac/tach lens, drilled a hole in the backing plate to mount the vacuum gauge, and grafted a doner piece to my inner bezel(the metal tin with openings for each gauge). I cut a hole (about 1 & 3/4 I think) in the tin where the vac. gauge should be, then cut a larger piece from a donor tin that had the opening stamped in it, and epoxied it in place. The doner tin was a regular gauge dash, so I used the temp gauge opening as my donor. I know this probably doesn't make much sense, but anyway, it can be done, and wasn't too hard to do. I can't tell that mine was ever modified. I thought about making a tach/vac dash out of a vac dash that I had, but the opening in the tin for the tach is an odd size, and doesn't match the other tin openings, so I had no donor tin. You can always just cut a regular hole in the tin, but it won't look right at night when your dash lights are on.