How much to buy one of those?

 

Sorry, not yet - I'm kinda embarrassed at the wiring spaghetti in there, not my usual work.

Thanks for your comments. I toyed with a few orientations of the tach and speedo. To get as much room as possible for the other gauges I moved them both upwards and closer together in the cluster; the needles can't go closer to vertical without hitting the gauge surround bezel or cutting the needles. Starting from 6:00 means they would move past vertical in their travel. Now it's mostly assembled I can see there might be room to move them down giving more options for needle position.

Yikes, it's home made. I bought a couple of used clusters for a total of $75 so I didn't have to rip into mine. There's probably $20 worth of wires, LEDS and such and I likely ripped through 25 sheets of laser printable acetate (at a buck a sheet). The boost gauge was donated by a friend and I bought the AEM W/B new.

 

Yeah, I know it's homemade. I still want to buy one.

 

Maybe a "how to" of sorts for those of us not so electrically literate?

 

This is the most ridiculously awesome analog gauge cluster I have ever seen.

 

That is awesome. The only thing I would have changed would have been actual number for the temp and oil pressure

 

Don't be shy! I've modded a few clusters and they all look great on the outside and messy on the inside. Here's my Miata cluster - now it's your turn.

C

 

Ok, since you asked so nicely. I added some interior shots to the Picasa album. http://picasaweb.google.com/gary.mac...eat=directlink

I've seen your work before Chris. In fact, it was your posts here at MT that prompted me to get off my a$$ and do something.

The electrical part is pretty simple if you can solder. I left the circuit panel in place so I could use the stock connectors which also gave me a place to connect my wires to run to the repositioned gauges. The LEDs are done the same way. One of my problems was using a US spec cluster for my Canadian spec car - until I realised the DRL connection was messing me up. The only other problem was using LED for the airbag and brake indicators; LED don't draw enough current to trip the electronics in the car so I added a resistor load to fix that.

 

Thanks for the pics! How's the backlighting handled? Looks like you've got a piece of clear plexi in there, and some sort of liquid mask.What program did you use to generate the faceplate, and what kind of printer was used?

C

 

I answered some of your questions in the comment for each pic. There is a piece of 1/4" clear Lexan. The backlight LED are embedded into the Lexan with foil tape over the end to prevent light from shining through the faceplate and to reflect light back into the lexan. I made sure that the LEDs were away from any white or coloured portions of the faceplate. The light exiting through the faceplate is reflected and refracted through the Lexan.

The faceplate was made using Adobe Illustrator using the methods detailed at revlimiter.net. The (orange) liquid mask you refer to is simply permanent marker applied to both sides of a piece of clear acetate (both sides to improve colour density). The faceplate consists of three layers. The viewed layer is laser printable clear acetate, the middle layer is white paper and the bottom layer is the clear acetate with orange marker. The blue and red markings are just more marker on the paper layer.

The printer used was a HP1012, plain old black and white. I could not find any acetate bigger than letter size (legal would have been perfect) so there is a join in the visible layer. between tach and speedo Further, the feed accuracy of the printer means that paper and acetate do not exactly scale leading to a second join (near the boost gauge) to get paper and acetate to align.

 

So can I buy one now?

 

Too Funny. I LOL'd

It snowed here in Toronto last night.....I'll say no more.

 

So you'll be buying the car back from the insurance company and selling the cluster?

*I actually kind of hope that didn't happen*

 

It didn't, (phew). I haven't had chance to get the wideband sensor bung welded in because the car has not been out yet and I don't want to run the wideband gauge without the sensor in place.

Also, I managed to drop the vac/boost gauge one too many times during the build and it no longer zeros (it only travels between -20 and -10). I've tried resetting the needle and tweaking the bourdon tube to no avail. So its off to the local tuning shop for a replacement.

Once it's installed I'll post up pics. I still don't think I'll be making them to sell though - it's a whole crap load of labour.

 

Just made something similar on my freinds mustang I will get a pic and post it. It is defiantly worth it.

 

My gauge setup is no longer being done because I got this...



Monitors oil temp, water temp, oil pressure, RPM, ODO, trip meter and speed. Top left is boost right now as well, but when I go Rotrex since it's a 0-5v signal I'm going to trick it into reading my wb02. All I have to do is hook the dash up to my computer and change the calibration settings.

booya.

They're under $1000 too... I love this thing.

 

Theory:
In general you shouldn't solder automotive wiring. Soldering creates a stress point in the wire that is more likely to fail than if you had just crimped it.
So yes, your joint is solid, but that's exactly why it is more likely to fail.

Practice:
I have seen both crimp and solder joints fail in aftermarket engine management installs. For crimps they were loose and not checked well initially. For solder joints the wire cracked after a while at the point where the solder made the wire stiff.

 

When you do what wayne says the crimp is bearing the load, the solder is only a backup and insurance for the electrical connection. the shrink tubing also helps bear some of the load. It is probably the best way to splice.

 

If you solder the crimp is irrelevant. With solder it will break at the edge of the solder where the wire goes from being stranded (non-soldered) to solid (soldered), because you have introduced a stress riser at that point. This is an inevitable fact of soldering.

If the wire doesn't ever see flex around the joint you can probably get away with it, but it's still not as good as a simple crimp (mechanically). This is why companies like Motec say in their manuals not to use solder, and why you'll rarely find solder in a factory loom.