My poor old dash finally cracked to the point that it’s falling apart. It has ran its course after 31 years. Have the replacement dash and I started pulling ignition, horn button, fuse buttons etc. out. But the 8 little red led lights? Questioning how to remove them without cutting the wires on the re-install.  They only go in one way from the face side of the dash. Any advice for me? 

Well this seems to be a “learn as you go” here. So I’m going to go this direction to install the new aluminum dash panel. Being that the wiring harness has no quick disconnect connectors under the dash, everything just behind the dash is all wire clamped together from what I can see. Understandable since my Ski Nautique is from the 80’s.

I ordered the aluminum dash panel off eBay from Outlaw Marine out of Melrose Florida. Panel is powder coated….nicely done. I added the strip across the top with a Correct Craft logo.

Started removing the screws from the old panel and it really started falling apart after I loosen the panel from the pod.

During the removal of the dash from the pod, the warning buzzer came apart. I know this little buzzer can be annoying but I’m going to replace it and if it gets too annoying to me, I’ll just pull one of the connector wires off the buzzer. For my year the buzzer is a Floyd Bell Inc., part number MC-07-116-Q. The company is still in business and still offer the same buzzer for my Nautique.

So being I really don’t want to make this a huge project for just 8 led lights and being that the Led lights fed in from the front side of the dash panel, I’m going to cut the wires. Order some quick butt connectors that are easy to use. You don’t have to remove the installation from the wires and can be reusable if you need to take them back off. The butte connectors were order off Amazon.

Started numbering all the wires installed butte connectors to be able to reinstall in the correct location.

Everything went pretty smooth. Led light wires along with all the other wires behind the dash do not have a lot of play in the length of the wires so patient/going slowly was the key here.

This little project took about 4-5 hours to do. Being that I was working in such a tight area with so many small wires. One thing I over looked on the initial installing was the panel. I should have done a dry run before I started hooking everything up. The aluminum panel did not fit correctly around the steering column plastic yoke. I had to modify the panel to get it to fit. In the end I was satisfied with finish look.