I have been pondering more and more whether the aluminum dashes are special made for racing or not. I'm leaning that they are very very special based upon the known facts we have about them.
#1. Not many found. Out of 1,523,319 of the 1962 full size Chevy's we actually know of 5 aluminum dashes, maybe a few others have them and haven't spoken up yet. Pretend like we know of 20 of them or even 50 of them. These numbers are less than a drop in the bucket IF these aluminum dashes aren't special. If 1 in 5 were aluminum then I would say they aren't special but no one is going to find 300,000 of these dashes or even 30,000 of them.
#2. We know Chevrolet was experimenting with making aluminum go fast parts for the 1962-63 cars specifically. Not like we are talking about finding other years of cars or even 1961 Chevy's and to anyone's knowledge there are no aluminum go fast parts ever made for 1961 Chevy's from GM.
#3. The process of casting a pot metal dash vs casting an aluminum dash is not the same. Though the process is similar you are talking about training people to do it, equipping them to do it specifically means using molds and equipment that hasn't already been used to create pot metal castings. There can be no contamination between the two or the casting will not come out correct. Even the temperature to which you cast aluminum and cast pot metal isn't the same. Its about 500 degrees different.
#4. Casting number is the same for all aluminum dashes. Pat and I determined we have the same casting numbers and Dennis's photo above matches both of ours. I might have some part of my arguments above a little off but my educated guess is these were all made at one place at one time for the very specific purpose of creating special light weight race parts. I'm sure there are more facts for or against I have not written here but I'm sure others can help. It would be cool if one factory only kicked out aluminum dashes (even if due to a shortage of pot metal supply issue) but there would be at least several TEN's of Thousands of them made or more and found on every kind of car imaginable. GM would not switch to aluminum unless they were doing a short special run or were going to kick out thousands. Not like these were made by some rogue employees on a late Friday night shift.
Ok, now chew it apart!
Not sure it matters but one of my dashes came from Canada (where they do not drag race or have circle tracks.
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