+2 Dashboard Tunnel Bracket

[JGeezer]

Hi again, recall I'm not working from any templates and got the little dear un-assembled.

I was missing the bottom dash mounting bracket, and made one up from what it looked like in the parts manual, and now I'm having a bit of a struggle getting the dash in. Has to go up quite a bit, with my 3rd party sourced unknown pedigree crash pad anyway. Before I start the brute force route I thought I should first check if I have it right. Is this about what that bracket should look like?

It is not going to be easy getting the dash way up there.

Thanks for any help. Or condolences. Or whatever is appropriate.

[KevJ+2]

I believe the bottom holes are slotted to allow forward / rearward movement for adjustment, or at least mine have. Have you slotted the holes ?

[mbell]

Looks like the bobbin protrudes further than the bracket. So don't think you get the dash back to the bracket. Kev's suggestion to slot the holes sounds good.

[JGeezer]

Slotting for fore/aft sounds good, but my real problem is up/down. That dash is jammed in there very tightly now, no way will it go up 1/2" plus for the dash holes to be the height of the bracket holes.

So ... should the bracket go down rather than up, as shown? Does the dash rest on top of the tunnel like in the pic, or does it properly rise up to the height of that bracket?

[mbell]

Goes up. Added photo of mine, bracket is much bigger than yours. Dash is mounted ~1.5" away from the bobbin bolt holes. My dash has 1/4" clearance to the tunnel.

[JGeezer]

Goes up. Added photo of mine, bracket is much bigger than yours. Dash is mounted ~1.5" away from the bobbin bolt holes. My dash has 1/4" clearance to the tunnel.

Thanks! That's a big help, especially that it's only 1/4" clearance to the tunnel. Back to fabrication!

[mbell]

No problem, the under dash trim was off so easy to access. Fyi Bracket seems to be 2" x1" L.

[bob_rich]

Hi J geezer

I had a similar problem on my rebuild +2 s Dec 1973. crash repair from a PO over 20 years ago meant I had to make up a special bracket and fixings for the lower dash. Like yours the bracket I had was far to low and on strip down there was just a piece of handy angle in place which was not very good. I made up my own bracket and because the fixings had to be low made up a couple of tapped strips instead of nuts and then it all went back together OK

Have attached a couple of pics

Hope it helps best of luck

Bob

[PeterK]

I had a struggle refitting my replacement dashboard (original bracket at the base) - it took a lot of levering to get the dash high enough. My subsequent issue was getting enough clearance so that the gear lever didn't foul the dashboard, but even so, ended up having to relieve the dashboard slightly. Thankfully, all the relieving is below the centre console so out of sight.
Peter