tach and gauges

[peterpan]

i mounted the gauges to the black metal cover thing under the lens
i had to cut the holes out and trim the lens around the gauges
and i had to cut the mounting point for the stock gauges all the way out of the plastic dash basically destoy the dash to the point the factory gauges will never go back in but the aftermarket gauges work pretty good so its no big deal

as for the tach i cut the plastic on the back of the tach and cut the dash up until the tach fit and i had to pull the chrome trim ring off the front of the tach after doing that the glass on the tach was loose but the black metal cover thing fit the front of the glass rubber seal tight and it compressed it together pretty good

i just finished putting the dash in the car and hooking up the gauges

with the glare its hard to get a good picture but here are some

[peterpan]

with the glare you can't see how i cut the lens in this picture where the red lines are is how i trimed it around the temp gauge and cut the right side off


the needles are more of a orange color so i am going to try chevy orange engine color on the speedo needle but i haven't got to that yet

[peterpan]

oh ya how do you like my odometer

[hammerdown7]

Thanks for the pictures, that dash looks great! On the odo, looks like you have a brand new car.........

Dick

[Musicman]

I'm in the midst of hooking up some gauges myself and recently found out that my fuel gauge is NG. Seems to have an internal short. I'll be sending it out for repairs soon hopefully but there is one thing I have noticed. On every dash I've seen on the 71-73 cars the fuel gauge is in the top right corner of the dash. On mine it's in the bottom left corner. It would also appear that because of the shape back there that it could only fit in that location and not in the top corner. Does anyone else have a car with the gauge in this location? Just curious


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[cosvega76]

From the literature I have, it looks like the fuel gauge moved to the lower left in '75. Seeing your 85 mph speedometer, yours is either a '77 or non-Cosworth '76 dash.

Chuck

[Musicman]

ahh, okay then. that helps clear up some questions then.
thanks a lot

[paranoid56]

I know this is crazy old, but does anybody have a pic of how they mounted the aftermarket gauges? did you cut out the factory ones to fit the gauge behind the metal panel?

[paranoid56]

bump, took the dash out and its a full plastic panel, did you guys just cut this out? dont really want to hack this totally up lol

[gt350fme]

You will likely have to do some cutting, years ago I glued some aftermarket gauges in place that worked fine.
Today I would use a hot glue gun to put things back together, think of the hot glue gun as a plastic welder.
Good luck
GT

[paranoid56]

well got to hack it up
make up a test panel to hold them, will cut something on the cnc later to make it perfect.
but i like the look, should work out well.

[gmagilla]

Here's how I got the big gauges in my old 71 . The piece of aluminum where it goes under the speedo & tach is only as wide as the gauge bezel so the bezel hides the aluminum at the bottom of the guage . Then I took a butane torch and metal coffee can to shape the plastic trim piece to match the curviture of the gauges , it don't take a lot of heat to shape the plastic and keep the torch moving as not to melt the plastic and wear gloves shaping the plastic , I don't know why I remember that so well Hope this helps anyone wantin big gauges .

[gmagilla]

The small indicator lights for turn signals and bright lights are from NAPA they had several differnt colors and chrome bezels , just drill a hole and they push through the hole .