ronmanfredi Posted 11 hours ago Report Posted 11 hours ago The 2001-2007 Firebird and Mustang based cars are so unique and appealing until you get inside the car and then you see either a GM or Ford car. In 2006-2007 Avanti did make a custom dash that was reminiscent of the late 80’s cars, but that was about it. I had recently sold our 1982 Avanti II which had a fantastic instrument cluster in the dash and as I look at the dash of our 2006 S197 Mustang based Convertible, it was easy to see that there could be some improvement of the gauge area. In addition, I wanted to replace the Ford Shaker 500 radio with a more powerful and modern flat screen radio, move the A/C-Heater controls “up” in the dash and clean up the sides of the console. The 2006 had 107,000 miles when purchased from the original owner and while he did a great job on maintenance, there was some normal wear and scuffing on the inside of the car which I am cleaning or covering up with carbon fiber wrap in addition to covering up all of the tired woodgrain. First, I looked hard at radio options and selected the Kenwood DMX908S Touch Screen radio. It has all the bells and whistles that I want, plus it has more power than the Shaker 500 radio. Crutchfield Audio sells the Kenwood radio and a wiring kit that connects it to the Mustang stock wiring which allows the 4 car speakers and 2 door mounted subwoofers to work correctly. I had previously replaced the 4 car speakers with JL Audio speakers which was a good upgrade and let me tell you that this radio upgrade is a HUGE improvement over the radio. Next, I had to decide what to do with the gauge appearance. In doing research for options on the Mustang itself, I found US SPEEDO, a company that make gauge cluster panels for all cars. After checking out all of the options, I selected the Stainless-Steel Panel. I also felt that the dash panel that covers the dash was missing 3 trim rings that could go around the gauges. Now I’ll tell you this was not an easy thing to find since there was almost nothing available. But I finally found a company called GAFFRIG which makes gauge trim rings for all sorts of companies. They did have the 4” ID gauge rings for the speedo/tach and the 3 3/8” ID rings for the center cluster. They were polished aluminum with some kind of clear coating added. The ring edges are pretty wide and once the speedo/tach rings were set in place, the center ring wouldn’t fit flush since it overlapped the other two so I decide to modify the edges in 2 places so it would fit correctly. Lastly, the plastic coating on the rings looked dull next to the chrome A/C vents in the dash so I decide to sand off the coating, repolish the rings and then put on a heavy coat of car wax to seal them off. They look like chrome now. Attached are photos of the project and I hope you like it!
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