Well, I hunted up a very nice largely uncut California dashboard for my 122 paint/restoration project.

It came with the ignition assembly (armored cable cut and key busted off in the seized tumbler), lighter and ashtray chrome housing, a spare wiper switch, and fan switch. These things I did not really need, but it's nice to have a spare.

Note, that after careful attempts to un-stick the tumber, I had to drill the sucker out to get it to turn...

Anyway... a few questions:

1) The weird thing about this dash is that the passengers side grab handle is absent. I don't mean that it's missing, I mean that it was never installed. There is only a single hole and no evidence that the other was ever drilled in. Weirdly the one hole *was* occupied by a rheostat that appeared to be hooked to the courtesy/parcel shelf light. Is that original? I thought they all had grab-handles. Was the handle a later addition? What about this rheostat - an addition or original?

2) There's an odd metal tab with a "keyhole" in it welded to the middle of the dash, right under the temp control hole. It's spot-welded like everything else and was painted the same color as the original cream-white and I think it is original to the dash. My 1967 dashboard has no such tab and I've never noticed one on a photo of another amazon dash. What's this thing for??

3) Aesthetics. Realizing that I have a fairly rare uncut dashboard, I hesitate to drill the holes needed to mount my overdrive indicator light (blue/chrome 1800E style), my hazard light switch (also 1800E style), the red safety belt/e-brake light indicator, or my smiths tach pod. My car is hardly original, but the look I'm going for is "P220 GT" or 122S GT Wagon I want my lights and switches to look as original as I can make them. I'm not sure where the holes "should" be to make it look right. Anyone have nice photo of a late model 122 or 123 dashboard with the factory-stock options?

4) Dashpads. I am not spending $300.00+ on a new pad and my old one is partially reconstructed using non-expanding foam sealant and a black leather-like vinyl covering. I want to add that nice knee protector pad and could probably fabricate my own. I'm thinking that with the dash out, I could safely just spray the foam on the dashboard top and bottom, and then shape it to fit, before removing and covering with nauga-hide. Is there any reason why I should *NOT* spray foam directly on the metal??

5) Radio blanking plate. I've got a nice CD player, but I am *NOT* cutting out the radio area! where can I find a blanking plate for this thing? I've never had any luck on eBay.

Thanks as always!
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1967 P220 Amazon, 1972 145S, 1973 1800ES, 1977 245 DL, 1983 245 GL, 1986 745 GLE, 1990 745 GL, 1995 945....
Sedan? .... What's a Sedan?