For reasons that remain mysterious, old trucks always seem to have too many poorly placed holes in the dashboard. In some cases they've been added, usually for a cheap cassette tape-eating stereo that crapped out shortly after being installed, or they were punched at the factory, but no longer serve a purpose. Basically that sums up the situation faced by Jason Scudellari as he went about building his 1956 Chevrolet pickup truck.
Jason, the manager of the CLASSIC TRUCKS Tech Center, spends most of his time at work collaborating with various magazine editors on technical stories (basically that means he gets his hands dirty while they take pictures). Despite a hectic schedule, Jason occasionally gets time to work on his project. So far the truck's cab has been treated to a recessed firewall, replacement floors, and a new transmission tunnel—the next step was cleaning up the dashboard by filling some holes.
01 Even without any extras there are a surprising number of holes in the stock dash—and none of them were useful.
02 Jason first marked the area to be removed, which was practically the entire center portion of the dash.
03 An abrasive wheel on an electric grinder was used to make the necessary cuts.
04 With the center section removed, the cut edges were smoothed with a sanding disc.
05 A pattern for the filler piece was made by taping paper over the opening.
06 The opening was traced on the back of the paper with a black marker.
07 After trimming, the pattern was transferred to a piece of 18-gauge sheetmetal.
08 An Eastwood roller was used to put the basic shape into the filler panel.
09 The bottom edge of the filler panel needed some fine-tuning—a body hammer and piece of tubing did the trick.
10 Compare the old with the new—the replacement has 11 fewer holes.
While Jason's truck had the usual assortment of openings that need to be filled, Chevrolet complicated the issue by stamping character lines around most of the factory holes that weren't going to be used. That meant it wouldn't be a simple matter of welding in small plugs, rather the holes would have to be made much larger to eliminate the raised portions and then filled.
Given the amount of effort required to accomplish his goal of filling the holes in the dash, Jason elected to go for the gusto and replace the center section of the dash, eliminating the ashtray and the knockout for the optional heater controls. While he was at it and the welder was plugged in Jason decided to fill the holes in the left side of the dash and plug the factory fuel filler as well. Here's the hole story.
11 Jason began welding in the dashboard's new center section by making a series of widely spaced tack welds, slowly making his way around the panel until the entire circumference was welded solid. After a few passes with a DA, the dash filler panel began to take shape.
12 Jason was on a roll so he decided to cut and fill the holes on the left side of the instrument cluster as well.
13 The same procedure was used on the left side: cut a hole, make a pattern, cut out a filler piece, and tack weld it in place.
14 Light grinding of the weld bead was all it took to blend the replacement panel to the dash.
15 Kev Elliott, Street Rodder staffer and English import, is also an accomplished bodyman. Here he spreads a skim coat of filler over the center replacement panel…
16 …followed by a coat of high-build primer.
17 Jason decided to fill one more extra hole, this one was for the former gas filler. One more paper pattern for one more sheetmetal filler panel.
18 Note the edges surrounding the hole have been ground down to bare metal for good penetration before tack welding the filler piece into place.
19 Welded and ground, the patch will be finished when the rest of the bodywork is done.
