How To: Project '66 Dash Restoration

The interior of a Mustang is where everyone spends his or her hard-earned money. And why not? When you're sitting at a stoplight, what else do you see besides the hood and a chunk of decklid through the rearview mirror? You have to stare at the interior every time you climb aboard your Steed. No one wants to look at the peeling chrome of a dash bezel or the cloudy lens covering your instruments. No, you want the interior to look as nice as the day it came off the showroom floor, no exceptions. Right?

We feel the same way, even though we're covering a complete restoration. When it came time to refinish the interior of our '66 hardtop, we pulled the drain plug on the budget and replaced everything we could get our hands on. Remember, we were also dealing with an interior color change and an upgrade to the Interior Decor Group offerings, thus many items would need replacing with the correct color or mechanical differences.

We looked in the Virginia Classic Mustang catalog for most of our interior items with a few select specialty pieces coming straight from its manufacturers. This month, we'll focus strictly on the dash area and what it took to get it looking like "day one" for us. In the next few issues, we'll also cover the rest of the interior as well as the trunk and exterior detailing, which will lead us into the final phase of the restoration-the drivetrain. Check it out.

Our completed dash dressed in black lacquer, sparkling chrome, and fresh woodgrain makes for a pleasing look. We can't wait to wrap our hands around our restored Deluxe steering wheel and point our hardtop toward its first show.	1-a Since our hardtop had been stripped to a bare shell for bodywork and painting, the first order of business was to reinstall the main dash-wiring harness.	1-b We were lucky because the harness was uncut and in excellent condition, though the original Courtesy-light brackets were beyond refinishing. A new pair of brackets snapped over the bulb sockets and mounted to the base of the dash did the trick.
2 New Courtesy-light doorjamb switches were a must as well. The originals were long since broken and discolored. While we're showing the main dash harness here, these switches come out later for installation of our door-harness pigtails.	3 Our original toe board was in good shape when we replaced our floors, thus the high- beam indicator mounting holes were still there. If your replacement metal doesn't have the holes predrilled, measure another complete car to locate the placement of the switch. You'll also notice our firewall insulation (from Ssnake-Oyl Products) was already in place.	4 Though our accelerator pedal was mounted when we detailed the engine compartment (July '01, Mustang Monthly), we hung our brake pedal from the pedal support after giving it a fresh coat of black and a new pedal pad and stainless trim.
5 When you go this far into restoring a Mustang, you don't skimp on the little things to save a few dollars. We installed all-new reproduction switches (except for the two-speed wiper) for safety. Here, our headlight switch was getting plugged in and routed to the back of the dashpanel. You'll have to depress the little button next to my thumb to remove your stock headlight control shaft.	6 You must have new chrome when everything else is fresh with paint and upholstery. These chrome control ID rings and replacement shafts were a must to bring the interior to full beauty.	7 The two-speed wiper control is still available as a Ford part in some catalogs, but they're disappearing fast. Luckily, everything electrical on this car worked before we took it apart, so we simply cleaned and reused the wiper switch. If a reasonable reproduction was available, we might have replaced it.