Bud English wrote:...and, if you're clever, they will have some sort of bobbin or captive nut there when it all goes back together. No added lightness and not original, but practical and no one but you will know.
No, just put em back with the nuts & washers as I found em
, as I said, with the crash pad removed the nuts were very easy to access with a spanner or fingers. It is possible to get to them with the pad in place, but it's a bit of a fiddle. On mine, the fibre glass was original, no modifications, it would have been easily possible for there to have been bobbins, but they were obviously never fitted, just nice neat holes drilled. Maybe they had problems with alignment & this was an easier way to get them correct, or perhaps more likely Colin worked out that a nut & washer was cheaper than bobbin & didn't have to be bonded in, so less time involved
elanner wrote:Slightly tangentially, how long should the screws be? I figure 1/2" for the thickness of the dashboard and 1/2" for the depth of the bobbins, so 1". And that's the length of the screws that I purchased from Sue Miller a while ago.
But when I fitted my dashboard I realized that for the screw that holds the steering column bracket - between the tacho and speedo - another 1/2" is needed for the thickness of the bracket. So 1 1/2". Is this right, because I've never been able to locate a longer one?
Nick
I'm guessing you are referring to a two seater rather than a +2 as in the OP ?
If it's any help, we fitted my friends series 3 dash with screws supplied by Sue, I didn't measure them, but an inch - inch & a half of thread sounds about right & they were all the same length. The bracket you refer to was simply attached to the dash before fitting to the car, it had the one 5/16 screw at the top, with a nut & washer, & two smaller screws with nuts & washers at the bottom. There was no bobbin in the body for this screw. I've just checked my series 4 & that is the same, no bobbin, the screw just goes through the dash & bracket, so is the same length as all the others.
Tim