89 dash board replacement

I broke the plastic part of my dash board trying to take it off. Has any body out there made a new one or have a source?

Yes Christine's has them 185 ouch, mine was cracked a long time ago but now its in three pieces

Bud, Allatoona is my typical stomping ground. I haven't been out much yet this year though, had out of town weddings every weekend for the whole month of May...ugh. I think I bumped into you at the ramp at Little River once last summer, where I usually put in. If you see me, say hello, half of my boat is decal-less this season, pretty distinctive.

I'm working on tidying up the wiring behind the dash now, doing away with the damn daisy chained power and ground distribution to the breakers. Had to cut out all of the breaker indicator lights to get the dash panel off so I can check that my pattern is the correct size. If it is, I'll probably get it cut later this week on the CNC at work. Once the CNC program is written, it would be a cakewalk to crank out a bunch of them, and slight changes would be easy as well.

Along those thoughts, I am considering doing away with the indicator lights for the breakers altogether. About half of mine didn't work anyway and they seem redundant to me, as you can easily tell the state of each breaker by the push button position. I suppose the lights would let you know if your breaker's internal switch got stuck "on", but what are the odds of that happening? Anyone have thoughts on this?

The old 2001 site had the dash layout in a PDF file. I could email it to you if interested.

Made mine at of white polycarbonate and used a black vinyl overlay to get labels etc.

Hopefully I'll be getting this cut out in some AL tonight or tomorrow after work. Gotta get our CNC guy a 12 pack and convince him to stay late for my "government work". I can provide anyone who needs it a copy of this file in 2D or 3D, in just about any format.   

I had not really thought about backlighting anything on the panel, I rarely boat after dark. Its aluminum and its just engraved, not cut all the way through. Maybe the engraving could be filled with glow in the dark paint? Hah.   

I think it would work well if the panel were cut out of a piece of double layer plastic with one layer translucent and one layer opaque. Or out of clear lexan with a vinyl overlay. Then just backlight the whole dash pod.

Yes, these panels would be nice back lit. In the aircraft I fly, they are called EL Panels. I think I have one from an upgrade that I could post a picture of. But essentially made of a translucent material that has a molded color on one side, and subsequently engraved, revealing the EL. Lights are then impregnated into the back of these panels in a few locations, thus spreading the light evenly throughout the panel. We control intensity a rheostat for each panel. I think very simple to make for our application on the boat, having just one panel.
hmmmm....

It was drawn in SolidWorks, which is what I do all my design work with at my job. Pretty neat program.

Well I got it cutout last night. Much thanks to the best damn CNC programmer I've ever known, Brandon. Overall it took about 5 hours, including programming time, locating the right stock, and finishing.

The only thing I would do different on a second one would be to go a little lighter on the engraving for the switch labels. We only had table space for 3 toe clamps, so the center of the piece bowed up slightly, causing the left hand column of switch labels to be deeper than the right side. Rather than leave it like that, we decided to go deeper on the right side as well to match.

Anyway, hope its acceptable. The Correct Craft script was about the closest I could find to the actual logo. I cant wait to get it installed.


The setup fixture:


Top and bottom profiles cut:


Correct Craft script engraving


Final product:

That really looks nice. Always impressed by men and machines. Good job.

Chuck if you have a look at my conversion you will see that I replaced indicator lights with led's. Just need to wire in series with appropriate resistor I think it was a 670 ohm from memory.

Did you say you had the dimensions already laid out?

Man I want one. That is impressive. How much $????

What's the difference between same year (or series) SN dash plates and a BFN dash plate besides the label?

Would you be able to send me a copy of the file for the dash panel? DWG file would be great.

Let me know if that is possible, thanks

Dustin