after market guages

[thgear]

what exactly is the process of installing aftermarket guages

the internet and ebay is filled with god knows how many varients.

basicaly i have a broken manual speedo, a tach thats upside down (basicaly it revs backwards) and a water/oil guage thats impossible to read

not to mention the fact that they look like they came from the stone age (car is freakin 23 years old)

anyway, if i buy myself a whole bunch of new guages, is it a simple plug and play procedure

or are there things like resistances and voltages that i have to "match up", so that the new instruments function properly and dont give me ridiculously false readings???

[ScotcH]

oil temp, oil pressure, and water temp are a must for a track car. These all come with their own sensors that need to be installed. Usually they use 1/8NPT thread, so for european cars, some sort of adapters are needed, and either tapping, or using existing fittings. You'll have to get Pcar people to tell you how they did it.

Speedo and tach use the existing signals (assuming yours are electric, and not cable drive), and can be calibrated to the particular range that your car uses.

As for brands, Autometer and VOD are pretty popular, and failry cheap. There is much more $$$ items, as well as whole integrated dash untis (Like a Stack), but start with the 3 basics.

[thgear]

Speedo and tach use the existing signals (assuming yours are electric, and not cable drive), and can be calibrated to the particular range that your car uses.


i do have a manual speedo, and with the instrument cluster thing in mylap i see that the speedo has some wires going directly into the tach i guess to synchronise it.

when you say "calibrate", what is involved in the process?

[finboy]

23 years old? leave it alone

a) if you have a gps unit.. it gives you your speed

b) if you have a OBD II car with broken gauges
this little baby is great

also clears Codes as well

http://www.scangauge.com/

[thgear]

what i really want is a working Tach that looks modern, everything else i can do without.

but the car in question doesnt have any speed sensors (no ABS) so i'm not sure how it gets is inputs

also it uses a DME, i dont think its OBD2

(and ive actualy looked into using those hiking GPS thingies for speed readings, just gotta make it look nice)

[ScotcH]

what i really want is a working Tach that looks modern, everything else i can do without.

but the car in question doesnt have any speed sensors (no ABS) so i'm not sure how it gets is inputs

also it uses a DME, i dont think its OBD2

(and ive actualy looked into using those hiking GPS thingies for speed readings, just gotta make it look nice)


Definitly not OBD2 :) Do you have a shop manual for teh car? Should give you a pin out on the DME ... see if there is anything related to RPM or tach. There should be something if the DME controls spark. Do you have a distributor? If so, you can probably grab a signal off there.

[Not4you]

Do all aftermarket speedos come with odometers? If not, I imagine a swap would cause troubles for a street driven car and would make resales tricky. Does anyone know how the car milage is recorded with aftermarket guages or is this a non-issue?