Joe Alphabet patterned it after some old Italian car, I think. It looks pretty good, especially with a wood or brushed-aluminum insert. This dash is the one in Steve Graber's Velo Rossa™. Steve re-used the Datsun gauges, but put new faces on them.
The Alpha dash is designed to replace the pad on the original dash structure. However, some customers have completely removed the old dash and used the Alpha as a replacement.
While the dash comes in black gel coat with molded in leather-with-stitching texture and can be installed that way, about half of our dash customers cover them with leather or vinyl. Steve used a new, marine-grade (UV resistent) synthetic leather product that comes with a little padding on the backing. By the way, Steve made his own center console out of marine-grade, thin plywood and covered it in the same material.
I do not sell the wood insert, but somewhere in my treasure pile I have some brushed aluminum blanks that I'd sell for $25 each. It DOES accommodate the stock heater controls, but Steve added aluminum trim around the controls to compliment the gauge panel.
Though Steve chose to remove the air conditioning on his car--and thus the 'eyeball' a/c vents on either side of the dash, as it comes out of the mold the Alpha dash does have recesses for those vents on either side. You can re-use the stock Datsun 'eyeballs' and hook them up the the a/c duct work.
There are no pre-cut holes in this dash, or the Simpson dash pictured next. Therefore, you can use any gauges and any combination you can stuff in there. For certain, you can use similar size and combination as the original Z gauges. The quality of the original gauges was not great, and modern gauges are available in more vintage appearance at reasonable prices.
Dash-Alpha-Instructions-Combined.pdf1.45 MB
