Okay, so I know it's a mortal sin to post the same thing in two forums, and I apologize, but I really didn't know if this was better off in the Softail forums, or here. I'm kind of thinking the Softail forums are frequented by those WITHOUT older Evo Softails, so this probably fits better here.

Anyway, I bought a 1989 Springer Softail a little while back (posted about it, with pics, in another thread). Anyway, the mechanical trip odometer does not reset when the **** is rotated, and I decided to do a little upgrading. I bought a Dakota Digital speedometer/tach to put in place of the old mechanical setup. The new speedometer/tach has wires to connect up to move the turn signal indicating lights, the neutral light, the hi-beam light, and the oil pressure light onto the speedometer face. You may already see where this is going.

I never liked the old style incandescent bulbs that light up through the little plastic windows, because the light seems to bleed through pretty terribly, so at night, it looks like my oil light or my hi-beam light are flashing on and off with the turn signal indicator lights and such. So, I really want to remove the lights from the dash and move them up to my shiny new digital speedometer, but I want to find some clean looking way to remove/cover the indicating light windows on the dash panel.

So, I decided to try to see if there is some way I could just remove the lenses, and blank it off with some shiny chrome plate or something. This is what I found when I started tinkering.



First off, this is the area I'm talking about on the dash, highlighted in the red rectangle. This is the old style dash, with the giant plastic indicator windows. for the record, my choke is relocated, because I have an S&S carburetor, so the hole just above the lights is no longer for the choke, just for a stud and acorn nut.





Now, if you flip the dash over, you'll see a giant rubber piece that is meant to keep the lights from bleeding through to one another (which doesn't work all that well). The rubber piece has sort of a hard face to it (not sure if there's a metal or plastic plate in there) that is held in place with two brackets and two Phillips head screws.





Now, with the rubber piece removed, you can see that it just presses up against the colored lenses, and a little chrome bar that splits the two rows of lights. There's nothing that holds the plastic lenses in besides just being sandwiched in place by the rubber piece.





Here's the plastic lenses, the chrome bar, and the brackets and screws





Here's what the underside of the dash looks like with all of it removed. You can see that it's a stepped opening, so there's a sort of rim around it. The lenses are cut to have a little flange around them, so the main part fits through the smaller part of the opening to go through to the front side, and the flange sits in the larger part of the opening in the back side. The rubber piece keeps them from going inside the dash, and the stepped flanged opening keeps them from coming out the top.





From the front side, you can see the nice, neat, rectangular opening. My idea is to find some type of a plate that will fit all the way through the front side of the opening, to sit flush with the top surface of the dash, but have a stepped edge to it to fit the inside lip of the opening. Then I can re-use the brackets to hold it in place.





Here's the tricky part, though. Because the lenses and rubber piece are so thick, the brackets don't reach down very far. Any type of filler plate I come up with will have to be thick enough to be held in place with the brackets, or I will need to find or fabricate some longer brackets. You can see the bracket highlighted here in the red rectangle, and see the large gap I'm talking about.






Anyway, I'm looking for suggestions. I'm hoping someone already makes a part for this purpose, otherwise I will have to come up with something. I am really looking for something that will just be smooth chrome, and fit flush with the opening, and just basically blank it off. Since I'm moving my indicator lights to the new speedometer, I just want to blank off the old lights and clean up the look. Any suggestions are welcome, and I appreciate all input. I searched but could not find anything specifically made for this purpose, but I'm hoping you guys can come up with something. Surely somebody has to have done something similar. Or maybe someone sells a whole new dash that just doesn't even have the indicator lights in the first place, maybe? Any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

You can buy plastic chrome stirps or even a plastic mirror, cut to size and stick some rubber on the back.

Or you could cut some ally plate, back with rubber and spray with wrinkle-finish black.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, man. I just bought some acrylic mirror plate off of Amazon, and going to try that out. Seems like it should be fairly easy to cut to size, being acrylic plexiglass, and with the mirrored finish, it should match up with the chrome pretty well, I think.

Whatever I fix up, I'll be updating this thread, posting pics, to show what I've done. I'm thinking this should look really good with the mirror plate, thanks for the suggestion.

 

Excellent explanation and pics! I think you will have to fabricate something to fit, as you will be extremely lucky to find just the right thing to fill that gap. Mirror sounds a great idea, as you will be able to comb your golden locks after removing your helmet.....