Thanks to mmw68 for the great write-up which was very thorough and easy to follow and thanks to bsevans for the info and link to the LED light. My dash box is installed and the LED bullet light works great. I was also able to add the same keyed Tuffy lock to match my other components so that I only have one key. Here's what I did...
First I asked Mark to leave the key uninstalled when he shipped the dash box so that I could mess with the Tuffy lock without having to remove the original lock. As it turns out I first installed the lock he supplied to get an idea of how it latched compared to the Tuffy...
As you can see above the latch is near the top of the lid so that it can latch to the main section of the box. If you compare Mark's lock to the Tuffy lock you can see that the Tuffy cylinder is much longer...
This required the latch on the Tuffy to be bent significantly to reach up to the top of the dash box. First I used a vise to bend the latch at about the same place as the original lock...
Next I measured the length from where the cylinder seated against the top of the lid to where it latched to the main box. Then I marked it on the Tuffy latch and tried to make a bend. The Tuffy latch is very thick compared to the original and not a solid piece like the small short latch Mark supplies. The biggest problem was that the next bend needed to be made just before the notched section seen here.
I found it very difficult to bend this section without the thinner area above the place I wanted it to bend, to bend. I had to do this 3 times... bending, straightening and bending... Once that was done the latch was too long to close so the hacksaw came out to cut off the excess length. It wasn't ideal that the catch would be the skinny section of the latch but I figured it would be OK since the Tuffy piece is quite a bit thicker. This proved to be an issue as the multiple bends caused the latch to break off short of where I was cutting because of fatigue to the metal...
I considered making an entirely new piece to act as the latch but the hole in the Tuffy latch that bolts to the cylinder is like a plus sign (+) and would be very difficult to cut out. Well as it turned out the broken latch actually works quite well to lock the lid. I don't like how it looks underneath but I am satisfied that it will keep anyone out aside from the crook that would break any type of latch.
I am going to see if Tuffy will send me 2 more of the latches themselves just so I can have another try at making one that works AND looks good.
As for the LED dash light I drilled a small hole in the back of the box and ran a red hot wire from the LED to the dash bulb wire behind the gauge cluster and grounded the black wire to one of the mounting studs for the dash box. I've never had a dash light but I'm stoked on this one. Here's a shot of the dash light...
Thanks again to mmw68 and bsevans.
EDIT: After thinking about it I think my next try for the latch would be to make an angled bend near the bottom of the cylinder up to the bottom of the main box and cut it to length. That way you don't require the difficult 90 degree bends and the latch would be perpendicular to the lid (instead of horizontal) and that much harder to pry up... Like this:
