Realized I haven't actually posted about this: after I had a set of Boost, Oil Pressure, and Oil Temperature gauges made to match the XF instrument panel by New Vintage USA - I needed a way to mount these in the interior. I decided against the easy option of an A Pillar pod, because it's a bit too..... Honda Civic for me, and also my dashboard leather - like a lot of others - had lifted up, bubbled, and looked pretty terrible once I'd removed it from the car:


So I pulled the leather off and cut a hole in it (no going back now)


And bonded in a 3-gauge cluster intended for a 2008 Mazda 3, as the profile was similar to this dash....


However, at this point, I knew I wasn't going to be able to recover this dash myself, so after visiting a few shops who basically wouldn't entertain the idea of recovering a dash, I found a shop that would and asked what further changes I'd likely have to make to this in order to have it covered, as I knew there were quite a lot of complex curves added by the gauge cluster. The owner told me I'd basically need to smooth everything out and make it as similar as possible to the kind of curves/angles on the instrument binnacle, so this called for further work.

Out came the expanding foam...


Which was then shaped...


...fiberglassed...


...and smoothed.


At this point, I also pulled all the door cards off to dismantle them, so I could have the leather accents trimmed to match.

After a little while, I had the parts back from the upholsterers:


The dash panel and door panels are trimmed in "Espresso" Ultrasuede, with tan stitching. It's essentially the same fabric that Jaguar use on the A Pillars and roof trim, so the texture matches quite well.


Fitting the dash. You can also see the sound-deadening I've added to the doors while the door panels are removed.


As well as the retrimmed accents, I covered the wooden door inserts with 3M carbon fiber wrap, as the wood that was there before clashed





Planned Next Steps:

• Re-do the carbon wrap on the wood below the dash, as it's an untidy "test" job
• Wrap the remaining wood trim in carbon
• Have the steering wheel reshaped to have a flat bottom (because race car) and retrimmed in the same Ultrasuede
• Have the center console armrest also retrimmed.

 

I am in awe, that's amazing & great workmanship. well done!

 

Sweeeeet, nicely done

 

you could sell this service to members here.
how did you hook the gauges up to get signal?

 

The bulk of the work was done by a local upholsterer - not particularly cheap either lol - so I don't think it's something I'd want to undertake replicating.

The gauges all use dedicated sensors that were supplied with them - the boost sensor is installed into a later-model chargecooler lid that has a threaded hole for a sensor that I picked up cheap off eBay. The oil pressure sensor is installed on a braided hose connected to the threaded port by the RH exhaust manifold (see my engine rebuild thread for details). The oil temperature sensor is installed into the oil pan extension at the bottom of the engine - I had a local shop weld a 1/8npt aluminum threaded bung into it.

 

Looks great! Really professional and high end OEM look. But no water temp gauge given our cars propensity for cooling issues?

 

Fair question. At the time, I wanted to use an existing gauge cluster that would match the profile of the dash, and generally nearly all the gauge clusters were for 1-3 gauges. It's true that with how it ended up I probably could've done my own and just had four instead of three including a water temp gauge, but I felt that Oil Temp was just as if not more useful than water temp.

I think there's a chance I may end up wanting more gauges - if that turns out to be true, I'll probably smooth a gauge cluster into the A-Pillar and have that recovered in the same OEM ultrasuede, but I've held off that for now as I wanted to avoid the whole Honda Civic/Foxbody Mustang/Fast & Furious look of A-Pillar gauges