Got back from a trip and got back into the shop yesterday. continued laying out and drilling holes in the instrument panel. I know a lot of guys send their panel off and have it laser or water jet cut, but I decided to go old school with this. lots of measuring, drilling, filing...you get the idea.

What took the most time was figuring out how to incorporate the large Stein fresh air vents that I picked up used on VAF.

I ended up cutting about 1/2" off the lower lip of the firewall, and making some extensions out of the big .063 scrap chunks that were left over from cutting out big holes for the screens. The pix below are of them in process, but hey ended up really nice. The vents look like they belong, not like they were just stuck on as an afterthought. The reason for the weird tab on the left one is that it picks up the with panel over there and can be drilled for the anti-turn washers on the toggle switches easily without having those holes show through the main panel. All those switches are big heavy Honeywell locking switches, so I also like the idea of having a little more meat in that area to hopefully cut down on the panel flexing and switch wiggling.

I primed the panel after it was done and forgot to get a picture, but I think it's going to turn out nice.

I've got to drill a few more holes in random locations for parking brake knob, panel dimmer knobs, etc. but the major work on this is done.

FYI- Just in case it's helpful to anyone, the Klixon mini-breakers have a slightly smaller hole than the Honeywell switches. I don't remember the drill size off the top of my head, but I measured them and ended up going down at least one drill size.