I finally got the white glow gauges faces in the mail and all of the aftermarket gauges installed in my gauge cluster.

Here's a few pics of the finished product......


.....Before the front cover was installed


.....Fully assembled (car polish does a nice job of getting rid of those ugly scatches on the clear plastic cover)


.....And the night time view


The ony thing I'm not completly satisfied with is that the water temp and volt meter glow in green, and the oil pressure glows in blue....the other glow faces I can change to either blue to gree.....so I've got either one or two oddball colored gauges depending on which color I want to dominate. I know I can switch the power supply on the oil pressure gauge to change the color but, that means waiting another 4 weeks for the parts to arrive....and I'm feeling lazy.

I wasn't too sure how that was going to turn out, but I like it! It looks pretty good. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Where have you bought the gaugs? Was it hard to install them? Why isent the fuel gaug round? Looks really nice!! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

1. Looks like generic Faze guage you can grab from almost any major parts store (Auto Zone, O'Reillys, etc).
2. The install doesn't look too complicated but I'm sure it took alot of time and a good bit of skill.
3. Fuel guages are a major pain in the butt to replace because a. aftermarket fuel guages are few and far between, I'm not sure if faze makes them... don't quote me on that. b. you have to find one that will work with your specific fuel guage type. So he left the guage stock as to (probably) not have to deal with the B.S. related.

4run95 those guages look awesome. props

Yeah....what LeDuece Said......

Installing the gauges into the cluster box isn't too hard at all. First, I removed the aftermarket gauge "guts" from the plastic case they come in. Then, I used some 0.025" copper sheet and cut and bent little "legs" that bolt to the gauge leads (the threaded pegs the wires are attached too) and then to the inside of the cluster box.....where they are held in place by the screws that held in the factory gauges. The legs are bent (and soldered) into all sorts of strange shapes to mate up with the correct cluster box leads, on the back of the cluster box.

The "power source" boxes for the glow faces are zip tied to the back of the gauge cluster box, with the power wires soldered into 2 of the orignal light sockets in the factory gauge cluster (those light sockets were used for the gauges I removed...the blubs aren;t needed with the new gauges). The output wires go through a few small holes I drilled into the box and go to the gauge faces.

The Speedo, Tach and gas gauges are the factory originals. I changes the faces to white "glow" faces I bought off e-bay for around $40.

The crux of the whole thing was making the face plates so the new gauge cluster look good. After hitting every harware store and hobby shop within 3 towns, I came up with some thin (yet sort of ridged) grey plastic sheets, PVC pipe cement, a can of flat black "plastic" paint and a tube of "canopy" clue for R/C model airplains (any other type of plastic glue with "fog" the clear plastic). I cut the grey plastic sheet into the shapes I wanted (with the holes for the gauge faces), painted it black, then took a dremel tool and ever-so-carefully cut the clear plastic cover off of the factory gauge cluster. I cut it on the top bottom and sides....not on the face. Then I used the PVC pipe sement to clue the new cover plates into place, and used the "canopy" clue to glue the clear plastic cover back onto the factory gauge cluster. Then re-assembled everything. Sounds easy....but it took a while to figure out how to get the face plates installed without screwing everything up....get that PVC cement on anything and it will look like a hack job.

I'm pretty happy with it overall. I was a little concerned about the accuracy of the gauges. Like LeDuece said, they are just generic Faze gauges. But, I've checked all their calibrations and they aren't off by more than 2%.

Thanks for the info! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />