When building a street rod, unless you are building it to look like the day it rolled off the showroom floor, you find yourself constantly hiding whatever you can, wherever you can. One area that usually ends up hiding more items than was ever intended is the dashboard.

The dash is the one area that lives up to the old saying, “10 pounds of stuff in a 5-pound bag,” which generally carries with it a whole set of challenges and/or problems. When it comes to the ’33-’34 Ford, conditions are worse than normal, as there’s practically no space behind or under the dash. By the time you place your gauges and an A/C unit, there is little room left for much else, including a glovebox. When your needs are such that you require a certain amount of equipment behind the dash, most of the time the answer to your dilemma is a smooth dash.

While this may be the solution to finding the space you need, it does not solve the problem of what to do when you have a traditional-looking hot rod, or you just don’t like the looks of a smooth dash in your vintage hot rod and would really like to retain the look of a ’33-’34 Ford dash. Well, there are answers, and a simple one lies in a new set of dash inserts and gauges that are available from Redneck Street Rods. The new inserts are finned aluminum and will easily mount to a smooth ’33-’34 Ford dash to create the look of dash with a glovebox door.

Using a smooth fiberglass dash panel, also available from Redneck Street Rods, we’ll walk you through the mockup of the new, finned aluminum dash inserts and gauges. In the end, what Redneck has come up with is the great looks of traditional finned aluminum, with the gauges in clear sight, along with the recognizable shape of the – ’33-’34 Ford dash. Here we show you just how simple and easy it is to transform a smooth dash into one fit for a traditional hot rod. AR