jeff_man

iTrader: (7)

while my dash is out i'm going to switch the gages in the cluster for a real one. can anyone recommend one that looks like 99 oem, so black face and green lights are a big plus.

chriscar

iTrader: (24)

Not sure how the innards of an NB cluster compare to an NA, but I used VDO Visions in mine.
http://picasaweb.google.com/cscarpulla/miatagauges#



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jeff_man

iTrader: (7)

think it's the same for both years, is the oil press also vdo?

chriscar

iTrader: (24)

Yes it is.

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jeff_man

iTrader: (7)

they don't show a price on there site, what did you pay?

hustler

iTrader: (6)

omori you faeg:

hustler

iTrader: (6)

I have a black w/red lighting greddy EGT and greddy temp gauge if you want to trade or whatever.

chriscar

iTrader: (24)

I don't know which site you're looking at, but I bought them from eguages.com

This isn't a 'drop in' procedure, you need to mod the innards of the cluster. Did you look at the pics in the link I posted?
http://picasaweb.google.com/cscarpulla/miatagauges#


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jeff_man

iTrader: (7)

i called you to ask about your gauges yesterday but you didn't pick up so i forgot about it. i looked on the greedy site and they where listed for 150-200 =X

looking into ways to change my gauges cluster to blue back lighting seeing as i can only find 1 green light water temp gauge with a black face.

Nagase

iTrader: (6)

Bringing this up as it was referenced in the deja vu thread.

The cutting of plastic is easy.

The circut board on the back scares me. What did you have to do with that? Any electrical bits you needed to cut into/move/anything?

chriscar

iTrader: (24)

I don't have any completed pics of the back of that cluster, but I probably had to solder in a few jumpers. It's not rocket science though, you just need to follow the traces visually, and replace the ones you cut out. You'll also want to wire the bulb from the aftermarket gauge into the same circuit as the cluster bulbs, but again, the traces are right there to see.

Here's the back side of an SE-R cluster I did for a buddy of mine. It allot more work than the Miata cluster, because you need to chop out part of the socket in the lower left hand corner.

Nagase

iTrader: (6)

Wow, that really makes my head hurt to look at. It might not be rocket science, but i have no idea in looking at that picture where the lines go, or even what you're soldering to.

Assume the black bits on there are like flat wires, can you just solder anywhere on them?

chriscar

iTrader: (24)

It's a flexible circuit board. The lines are the circuits. Most of each circuit is covered with a non-conductive material, and the areas left uncovered are copper colored. If you aren't proficient at soldering, this may not be a good mod to undertake, as it's tricky to solder without burning a hole through the plastic.

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chriscar

iTrader: (24)

Here's the thing, you don't really need to know where they go. You just need to replace whatever you've cut out.

Follow the dotted green line from the upper left side of the picture line to where I cut the circuit out to make room for the bulb, and beyond to the solder pad. This is a convient place to solder a replacement wire to (as indicated by the dotted orange line). If there was no exposed solder pad, or bare copper, I would have scraped some of the blue coating off to expose the copper below it.

[edit]Same theory for the circuit between the two bulb sockets.[/edit]

Nagase

iTrader: (6)

That is... beautiful. Thank you, you rock!

chriscar

iTrader: (24)

Yeah! I didn't waste my time explaining it to you.

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Nagase

iTrader: (6)

Taking it a step further, should i connect these (poorly drawn colored squiggles)?

chriscar

iTrader: (24)

The easy answer, unless you're smart enough to figure out otherwise, replace everything that you cut out. Just get your game plan finished BEFORE cutting.

And hot glue works nicely for tacking wires down. You can see where I used it on the back of the SE-R cluster in post #11

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Nagase

iTrader: (6)

Easy pie. Off to get some VDO gauges.

Thank you again.