Back in the dark ages, my partner (Harry Sparks) and I took our '57 Chevy sedan delivery to a Points Meet at Blair NB and were told by the tech guy that our DASH was illegal because when we removed the heater controls and radio, we didn't replace tthe missing items with metal.
We got some beer cans, cut them up and filled the holes, and hoped that our impromptu "fixes" would be acceptable to him (it was our first time at that strip.)
They were....
Problem solved!