Making Parts

I have a client who is building an over the top 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air. It is a project which was started as a drag race car and never finished, my client bought it and intends to put it on the street powered by a beautiful 496 cubic inch big block Chevy with an 8-71 blower on it. The motor is done and it's an 800 horsepower piece of jewelry!

The car will be coming to me for a whole bunch of fabrication work in the next few months, but in the meantime he asked me to come up with a custom gauge cluster based on the stock 1955 gauges. He is running a full complement of aftermarket Autometer gauges in cups so we decided to eliminate the temperature gauge in the cluster and run only the fuel level gauge, but centered in the stock cluster. It's a real subtle modification that not many people will notice but those in the know will really appreciate it. Here's what I came up with.

This is a stock '55 Chevy passenger car gauge cluster.

Here it is taken apart, these are the main pieces. The lens is plastic but I will have a new one cut from glass, and then have the new layout with the gas gauge in the top center without the temperature gauge lettering. The plastic lens is scanned and then it's all done in photoshop!

The stock face with both opening ups top, after sandblasting to remove paint front and rear.

I cut this section out using a cutoff wheel.

Then I marked my centers and clamped this piece back in it's new place.

After welding, making a patch for the other side, welding it in, grinding, sanding, hammer welding, sanding some more, yelling at the part, yelling at myself, going to lunch, and sanding some more...I came up with this. It will have to be bodyworked a little to make it perfect, then primered and painted semi gloss black like factory.

This was the stock rear section of the gauge cluster.

I filled the whole thing and mounted the gas gauge in the center.

Here it is all back together. Are we there yet?