I've got a beautiful, 28,200 mile, 1987 IROC that I'm currently LS7/570, Tremec T56 Magnum F swapping along with a Holley Dominator and a Holley 12.3" ProDash. This is not my first swap as I did almost the exact same thing with my 1991 Foxbody Mustang coupe. The coupe got a LS376/480 and a regular, non-F body T56 Magnum. I had to do a lot of fabrication to mount the 12.3" ProDash and it turned out wonderful. I love the 12.3 ProDash so much in my Fox coupe that I knew I had to have one for my IROC. Here is a picture of it in my Fox:


The plastic protective wrap was still on the ProDash in this picture and it wasn't yet connected to the Dominator.



There is a one-man operation called "CarChains3D" who makes 3D printed bezels to mount digital dashes as well as bezels for traditional, round dial gauges. He makes a bezel that will mount a Holley 12.3 ProDash in 1990-1992 Camaros with a little bit of cutting. I'm not scared of a little cutting! Here is a link to what I'm talking about:

3D Printed Digital Dash Bezel for 1990-1992 late 3rd Gen Chevrolet Camaro - CarChains3d

If you scroll down to "Product Description" he talks about the 12.3 PD requiring a little bit of cutting on the 90-92 dash.

My car is a 1987 and I know the instrument cluster and front, trim plate is different than the 90-92. My question is this: is the actual plastic dash behind the instrument cluster different? If it is, then I would need to try to find a 90-92 plastic dash to use his 3D printed bezel.

Here are a couple of pictures of my car's dash with the instrument cluster removed:






This big,12.3" ProDash will have to be raised up and the steering column dropped down to physically fit. You can see plastic dash tabs that the PD's top is touching. I could very carefully cut them and move the digital screen up at least 1/2".


So again, my question is are the later model plastic dashes different from my 1987? Maybe there is a lot more clearance with a 90-92 dash.

 

Man, I dunno how that's gonna fit since it's covering the area where the steering column goes. Looks way to big to even move up far enough to fit. I guess anything is possible with enough fabbing. Those screens are awesome though. I decided to just go Dakota Digital in order to avoid cutting anything up.

 

The ProDash is going to need to go up as high as possible and I'm still going to have to drop the steering column down some. If I remember correctly when I spoke with CarChains3D on the phone several months ago, he said that the column has to be lowered even for the 90-92 models.

 

I found this youTube video of an installation of the 12.3 PD in a later model 3rd gen using the CarChains3D bezel. Very informative video on a "road less traveled."

 

I spoke with Cory, owner of CarChains3D, on the phone today. He told me that he's been getting a lot of interest from people who want to install the big ProDash in their pre-1990 3rd gen Camaros. He's about to take possession of a pre-1990 dash and he's going to start work on a bezel to fit the 12.3 PD in the earlier dash.

 

I spoke again wth CarChains owner, Cory about a week ago. He never did get the earlier model, 3rd gen Camaro dash.

 

Since you are already cutting up a nice, low-mile car... why stop at the dash? Why not make room to raise the Holley screen up higher? Or install a '90-'92 dash face and use the available bezel?

 

I've spent a good part of the last 3 days working on trying to get my ProDash into this earlier model, 3rd gen dash. A ton of work and I'm not real happy with the look.


Bought some textured, 1/8" thick ABS plastic from Amazon. Inexpensive, looks good, and easy to work with. You can see that one of the pieces is already cut out to the proper shape and is under the ProDash. This piece of ABS mounts the ProDash to the dashboard. I call it the inner piece.



Here is a picture of the outer ABS piece. The plastic is black but it looks grey in the picture. You can see that I've got the ProDash up about as high as possible without cutting into the dash pad area.



Another picture and it still looks grey.

Obviously I've still got to cut out the portion where the steering column will go. I just wanted to see if this had a chance of working and it does. That being said, I'm not super happy with it. My wife thinks that I should just procede with the work and get everything installed and see how I like it with the steering column in place.

Without an OEM bezel around the Holley ProDash, the look just isn't what I'm looking for. If you look back at my first post with the picture of the ProDash in my Foxbody Mustang coupe, you can see how the Ford OEM instrument cluster bezel really makes it look like a factory installation.

 

Here is a link to the same YouTube video I posted back in post #4 of a guy installing the same Holley 12.3" ProDash in a 1990-1992 Camaro with the aftermarket bezel to fit the ProDash to the Camaro's dashboard. It is then finished off with the OEM outer instrument cluster bezel making the installation look "factory."


At 13:40 into the video is where he starts to install the OEM, outer bezel and the look is just super clean. Very similar to the way my Mustang's ProDash ended up looking. Because this looks so good, I'm still considering buying a late model dash and installing it into my car.

 

Honestly, what you've got so far doesn't look too bad to me. Due to how the earlier dash and bezel is done, I don't think you can make it much cleaner without swapping to the later dash.

The later dash has smoother contours and looks more modern anyway.

 

Yes. It's not too bad and maybe I'll just try to live with it. I agree with you that the only way that I'm going to get a cleaner, more OEM look is to replace my 1987 dash with a 1990-92 dash.

 

I know you have seen my video now, but to get it to fit you are going to have to cut all of that out and move it back towards the windshield, raise it, then lower the steering column probably 1/2 inch.

Here is that thread for those interested!

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/memb...-iroc-ls3.html