After a few months off, we got back into the garage to get things moving along. The two photos below don’t even being to note the time involved in laying out the final drilling holes. Spacing, alignment, taping, measuring, praying and luck are a few things that come to mind! I think the end result will be amazing. We had to make several decisions based on the different options at hand here. Adding the wipers needs a switch, the A/C & Heater has 3 switches, hazards, horn, and driving lights are there too. The lightswitch I will mount under-dash to give a cleaner look (IMHO)
First we made a template for the lower dash portion with a blank of aluminum. Measured out (multiple times) at a layout/layouts. Originally we had the A/C compressor switch mounted lower but I think it balances out the wiper switch on either side of the speedometer. The carbon fiber, while strong – can be very finicky. I used a 29mm (1 1/8″) holesaw for the hazard switch, and 22mm holesaw for the driving light and horn buttons. The heater fan and temp controls used a 10mm and 13mm drill bit. The A/C compressor switch was 13mm, and the wiper was 1/2″ hole. When drilling carbon fiber, speed and lightness to touch are very important. The CF dust is no joke, do NOT breathe that stuff!
The holesaws IMHO are the best. If you can keep the bit from walking around it will plunge through the CF quickly and painlessly. A regular drill bit is a bit more tedious as it can tear the CF strands as you progress through the dash. Overall, with the initial layout, we’re very happy with how it is turning out.
Next up was finalizing the Wilwood EPB mount and doing a large amount of wire dieting. The whole harness is quite long, about 1.5 lengths of the full car so we wanted to eliminate the ‘bulk’ of wiring.
We needed to find a good place to mount the EPB brain, and given the dash and glovebox – it’s going to be a challenge with space back there. My son found that if we angle a vertical mount – it will hide the wires, and tuck the EPB guts behind the dash and out of sight.
My son loves to solder, so we use our cool TS-100 pencil soldering iron and shrink tubing to seal things up. We also ran the main lines for the rear calipers up the passenger side tunnel and attached with some ziptie clips.
I think that’s probably the last of the major drilling for the dashboard, maybe some mounting holes for the top bar and some supports for the bottom. We will be spraying a matte finish clearcoat over the dash to give more UV protection to the dash so it doesn’t yellow. We are using USC Spraymax Matte Clearcoat 3680065 as it comes highly recommended by the forums.
