A brief introduction, I have owned my Golf Rallye for about seven months and I decided right at the start that I wanted a Mk3 dashboard in it. Therefore when a LHD version came I jumped at the chance (cheers to Duncan for not fitting it to his own Rallye). Since the dashboard has been fitted into the car, and people have slowly started to learn of it I have been inundated with emails and people asking me how to, how much, where, when, why, etc would you do it for me? you get the picture. Therefore I decided to sit down and write it out as best I could (I am no professional at this so be patient). I also used as many photos as possible to show you rather than me trying to explain it, as they say pictures do speak louder than words.

Where to begin? Well get yourself a dashboard would be a start, this might prove a problem in its own right as the Mk3 dash conversion is getting very popular. I know because as I have said a lot of people have asked me about it and even to do it for them . If you do manage to find a breaker with a dash try and take it out yourself, although its not going back into you car the same way it will show you how the dash itself is assembled. The most important part of the dashboard though is the metal cross member that the dash board bolts to, it is vital that you get this as it makes installation into you car a lot easier.

Your first task is to remove the original horrible square outdated boring (this could go on forever) dashboard from your own car. This is pretty straight forward common sense, but just remember the two 10mm nuts which bolt the dash through the bulkhead, they are found in the engine compartment under the scuttle tray by the window wipers. If you get stuck though the trusty old Haynes manual should come to you rescue, but truth be told if you cannot remove the original dash yourself I wouldn't attempt trying to fit the Mk3 one yourself.

Once the dashboard is gone you need to remove all the heater channels from the front of the heater unit,there are two one for the screen and one for the side floor vents (both held in with plastic 10mm nuts). Then take your Mk3 dashand get yourself a hair drier, warm the top outer edge (where it meets the window) of dash and gently pull the vinyl till it start to peel away. You need to clear the entire front edge of the dash and also the corners where you need to cut.

Now trial fit the bare dash into place, you should now see just how much requires cutting from either end. Holding the dash in place keeping it as central as possible (a second person helps) mark both ends where it meets the A posts of the windscreen. Remove the dash and cut along your marks about an inch at a time, cut either side equal but remember to trial fit into the car after each pair of cuts.You should slowly sink the dash in towards the windscreen, but it wont go all the way so be careful, as your bulkhead now starts catching underneath and the outer edge of the dash also start catching with the windscreen. So you have start removing plastic from the underside and cut about an inch from the front centre of the dash so that it fits the shape of the windscreen.

Once the dash is nice and tightly fitted into place you can remove it and start concentrating on the finer details. First up are the heater controls, the standard Mk2 cables are not long enough so I used Mk3 cables which are practically a straight swap with a few alterations.

The next bit was probably the hardest and trickiest bit to get correct, heating vents. To do this correctly I used a plastic welder and fabricated a box section from the windscreen vent to match up to the vent from the heater matrix, this ended up giving me more airflow than I originally had with the old dashboard. So basically I went from Fig 5 to Fig 6 cutting away the original dash and welding in more plastic to build a box section and kept trial fitting into the car until I had it spot on with the original vent.

After the box section for the windscreen was fabricated and trial fitted to ensure it all lined up it was time to look at the side vents. These were slightly more tricky to do, and was over come by matching the Mk2 vent tubing to the Mk3 vent tubing using fibre glass.Although its not pretty it worked just fine. I have intentionally left out the top centre vents (you can see the vents plastic welded in fig 7.) as I plan on using them in the future to hide some of the intended stereo. I quite fancy an Alpine screen and this position higher position up on the dash will be a definite bonus, plus I can hide the screen which does not have a its own clip off facility.

With all the heating ducts sorted, you can move onto fitting the dash into place. Although you could get some of your wiring out of the way now as I did, but I did it this way because it was the middle of winter and I didn't fancy having both doors open in the snow! To mount your dash you need to assemble it onto your metal cross member, but first this cross member will require some alterations (like you didn't see that one coming). If you fit the dash to it you should see just what needs cutting off, both ends need removing were they overhang the dash and the largest of the brackets (the one that goes to the floor in a Mk3) needs cutting of also.

Once complete trial fit the dash into the car, it should sit in quite nice now. If it doesn't now is the time to make some further alterations. I used a couple of wooden beams to hold the dash tightly to the windscreen while I made up some brackets to match the Mk3 cross member to the standard Mk2 brackets. With the brackets done it was finally time to put the dash in for good but you must remember to re-glue the vinyl back into place as you wont have chance once its in . My dash was welded in (Fig 9.) although you could bolt it, but I thought that welding would hold it firmer and stop the dreaded squeaks (which it doesn't do). Even with the dash welded in it is still possible to remove it as you have only welded the metal cross member in place and the dash can be unbolted from this in the future should the need arise.

With your everything now in place, you can start assembling the dash itself, i.e. switches, glove box, even your radio etc. This should leave you now with just your clocks, ignition cowling, centre console, and a million other fiddly little bits which you think you will never get done.

The centre console also required quite a few alterations to get into place, but this I think is mainly due to my car a Rallye which has a raised floor pan. Therefore for all you Mk2 owners out there you might not have to do as much, but I am not sure. Even the rear section of the centre console require modifying as the handbrake sits slightly further forward than in the Mk3, therefore in the Mk2 when the handbrake is released it will not go down all the way and therefore leaving you brakes engaged. I did fit the Mk3 handbrake to try and overcome this but it didn't work, although I did leave it in as I think its more factory looking.

Well you are nearly at the end of you dash installation and hopefully you can now confuse people when they stare into you car. Your not in the clear yet though, as I have left the best till last, THE CLOCKS!!!

For those people who know me or have seen my car will understand straight away my dilemma on this matter. The wiring of the clocks is pretty easy, but its when you get to your speedo and rev counter that things get complicated. You see a Mk2 has a cable driven speedo but the Mk3 has an electronic one, this was the easier of the two problems to overcome. A vehicle speed sensor (VSS) is what was needed, once this was bolted in and wired up the speedo came to life (It even reads in reverse!).

This leaves just the Rev counter, or should I say this is where I leave you with your rev counter. Except maybe those people out there running a G60 engine, you see the G60 engine is an 8V block therefore require an 8V rev counter but due to this engines amazing capabilities it also requires a 16V speedo (160MPH reading). Since I have used Mk3 16V clocks the rev counter doesn't want to co-operate, so I am currently looking into this myself.

Well I will leave you with just a few simple things to do, indicator stalks (I used Mk3 ones which are a direct replacement for late model Mk2s), Ignition cowling etc but I think I will let you sort that lot out yourself, because at this rate my brief little article is about to become a book!

Even though the dash still is not finished in my car (just that rev counter to sort), it took me about 6 weeks to install working mostly weekends and a few cold winter nights. After your over the initial shock of a bare wiring loom clad bulkhead and an obviously too wide Mk3 Golf dashboard that you will think at first will never fit in, its pretty easy to do with a lot of patients and a few beers.