Wanderlust Bus Dashboard Installation Part 2: Paradise by the Dashboard Light Part 5 of 4

bus dashboard installation

Before we jump right into today’s post, if you missed the other episodes of our 5 of 4 part bus dashboard installation series, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, here are links to all the previous episodes.

Now, with that out of the way, we can move on to the matter at hand. The bus dashboard installation of the gauges and the indicator lights.

BUS DASHBOARD INSTALLATION

After we install all of the wooden dashboard components (well, except the gauge boxes), we move onto incorporating our gauges.

The process starts by taking the old harnesses and extending them. When it comes to the Wanderlust bus dashboard installation, we needed to add some length to allow for the new positioning of the gauges. The old dash was one big open piece of plastic that allowed all of the “stuffs” to mount to the rear of the panels very easily. Our new panels are small rounded boxes with even smaller access holes.

We used original bus wiring that we removed during demo to create our harness extensions. This saved a ton of money since new wire can be rather pricey. In some situations, we are using wires that are a large gauge than the original, but not by much. This should not cause any issues because as long as the current doesn’t bottleneck, we should get the same voltages as before.

Once the harnesses are extended, we move on to the next phase of the bus dashboard installation, the incorporation of our original gauges into our new boxes. This process can become VERY confusing, VERY quickly. If I can give you one piece of advice, it’s this:

LABEL EVERYTHING

By labeling each wire individually throughout the bus dashboard installation process, we can be sure that everything comes together easily during reassembly. I mean, you can always just guess, but I’m pretty sure that will end in disaster (or at the very least, non-functioning).

After you get everything installed, you can just go about hooking up all the loose connections, which is easy since you label everything…lol. Hopefully, once all is said and done, you’ll have a bus that has fired back up like we did.

Check out the video of the final part of the installation process below, and if you have any questions (cause I know some of it may have gotten lost) please ask them in the comments below, on our video page, or come talk to us on our Facebook page.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *