It's good to have a retired German engineer on hand (my father). The dash face is pretty easy - just have a sheet metal place put two 90 bends in some 14 to 16 gauge aluminum, trace & cut out the cluster shape, and use a hole saw for the gauge(s) and switches. The brackets are trickier, as the header/bulkhead behind the dash is curved and not level. We took some measurements, mocked things up with tagboard, and then bent up some practice brackets. Because he's a German engineer, dad the took all the measurements & angles, and cut some wood blocks to form the final brackets over. The cluster screws to the brackets, and stand-offs (threaded rod) are used both as bolts to hold the cluster in place, and on the other side, to receive the screws that hold the dash face on. Lot's of labor, but it's clean, light and functional. Since the pictures, I put a starter button in the left upper dash. I've left room for another gauge to the left of the oil temp gauge that's in there. If more room is needed, the dash could easily be extended in width or depth for the next dash face.
While dad went a bit overkill for this, as usual (it's
exactly level, everythings perfectly ligned up, and very stiff), this could be be done by most, with a little help from a sheetmetal shop (we used a heating and cooling local business).
This pic was before final dash leveling
You can see the stand-offs here
You can see the keyholes used in the dash top to make removal easier here. We used the tinerman nuts (clips you screw into) off of the stock dash to screw the top of the dash into the top of the face of the gauge panel
The blocks used to form the brackets. We screwed the metal to the blocks to hold it in place while we were forming it.
The plans:
