Greetings everyone - hope your collective Volvos are making it through the winter...

I have been thinking for a while now about the dash in my 1970 145 - this spring I would like to change it over to a wooden dash. I know a guy that has made a stainless steel dash for his 142, and it looks pretty darn sharp.

Has anyone out there modified their dashboards - and if so, what did you delete or add?

It is unfortunate that the farmer I bought my car off of let his boys "install" a cheapo radio - I would love to re-install an original Volvo radio, but I am also toying with the idea of having no radio at all. If I eliminated the radio and the little speaker far over on the right side of the dash, that would clean it up quite a bit.

I was also thinking about putting in a clock where the ashtray is. Also, I would love to change the knobs over to some really funky toggle switches, just like in the new Mini. I would love to put in a tachometer, but I don't know where I would place it. I have thought about replacing the ribbon-strip speedometer, but I don't think I will - it is such a conversation piece (my Korean inlaws had never seen anything like it, and kids think it is pretty cool too. Hey, why would I ever want to change that?)

I would love to hear some other accounts of things that people have done to "modernise" their dashboards.

Ross
Lethbridge, Alberta