[Miles Offshore]

Serenity- I have been hard at work on my dash and will post a couple of pix as soon as I buy some film. I have learned a couple of lessons already as well,
1) Take the old ugly off first before buying starboard first. Under mine was beatiful original gelcoat. It had too many holes in it (made by me
;(, and if your dash doesnt have them you might be surprised. Also if you are replacing with starboard or something else , take the original to your local plastics guy and let them shape it(this I learned the hard way also, even though it looks squre and is pretty close it is not, plus one edge was bevered on the bottom and the sides were rounded over. [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] ).
I too have a lot of gauges and here is what I did,At the very top is my blu-sea switchboard 8 wide. I centered the gauges so that the outside edges of the gauges were equal with the outside edges of the switchboard. About 1" under the switches were.
2 on top were oil pressure and water temp, tach the centered betneath them and about4" below Underneath the tach and centered was oil pressure on one side, volt meter on the other side with flo-scan directly in line with the other two outside gauges underneath the tach, my reasoning being easier to look at both at the same time to optimize fuel savings etc. Below them and directly underneath the outer gauges (equally proportioned of course) were my 2 fuel gauges. So 2 top , tach, 3 below tach and 2 below them. I did get a couple of light scratches on the new board from the jigsaw when cutting out for radar, vhf etc. [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] but you have to look real close to see them.I should have layed it out from the backside. Looks pretty sweet to me so far, now I get to put the dash back on and wire to the new junctions etc,. Before putting gages in etc, I put the new dash in place on the boat and marked where the new cut-outs would have to go in the dash. The pattern of the old dash was great for marking original screw holes around the edges etc.This way rewiring the new gauges can be done in the comfort of my living room [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] . On a side note , my new hydraulic steering helm came in the mail yesterday via ups. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] Hope this post wasn't too long-craig