Undertook a kind of fun project today. On the driver side, near the door on the dash, I wanted to mount an A/C vent in the dash. Trouble is, the dash is rather convex, and the vent is prettywell straight. I thought if I did kind of a transition fitting that fit the dash contour and kind of fit the flat vent, it might look ok. In thinking about it all, it appeared that the "ribbed" look of the dash speaker panel and glove box door would look sweet at the left of the dash as well, where my vent would go. To bend that up, though, might be a challenge. So...I took some 1" thick aluminum and began milling a die, using a 1/4" end mill, on .500" c to c spacings. Then I milled out a punch that was just the opposite, but left approximately .040" clearance for the material I would be forming, leaving the punch parts considerably less than 1/4" wide. Once I had them milled and the sharp edges chamfered off with a sander, I cut the panel with the vent cutout from some 18 ga steel, placed it in the punch and die set, and put them both on the iron worker, with the hole punch assembly removed. By applying a bit of downward push with the ironworker, my die formed the ripples in the panel pretty danged close to what the factory pattern is. A little bit of edge rolling and dollying, and the panel is pretty close to what I'm wanting. Still need to do a bit of fine tuning, then prime and paint it to match the rose colored dash, but I think its gonna be pretty cool. If anyone is interested in doing the same, I could certainly press out some blanks pretty easy...
Wow ! The tools yes , and the knowledge of how to properly use them... I'm not a custom kinda guy but you alls are always teaching me new things I really like . this is Plu - Perfect ! .
How creative! Two thumbs up! (You could do something like that for speakers, too, right?) What a slick G!
As the vents that came with the AC are plastic, and the face of the transition panel is not totally flat to allow the little snaps to work, the vent is secured to the panel with an adhesive, then the whole works secured to the dash with a two part epoxy. Should stay put without having fasteners showing...
