vette427sbc
Well-known member
Santa was good to me this year and got me 7 AutoMeter gauges. All of them are Sport-Comps with black face/white letter/red pointer. The speedo and tach are 5" and the center cluster gauges are 2-1/16". All the gauges use electronic senders, so no more oil lines or tach/speedo cables in the interior.
The center cluster gauges were a breeze to mount. They fit in the stock holes, and even rest at an angle towards the driver like the stock ones.
The speedo and tach are slightly more difficult since you need to fabricate a bracket to mount them to the factory bezels. Also, since all of the indicator lights are in the gauges, you have to come up with a way for those to still work. Heres what I did: I bought some LED's from radioshack. These are made for 12v applications and have a resistor built in. I drilled some holes in the top of the tach and speedo bezels and mounted them there. The red LED on the speedo is brights (radioshack doesnt make a blue one) green is left turn signal. The red on the tach is brake warning, green is right turn signal and the two oranges are shift lights
I used a classic instruments pulse generator for the speedo. Super easy to install, just run your wires to the dash, and screw it into the factory speedo cable location. Here it is mounted to my Muncie M20:
I found it easier to put the gauges in first- not mounted to the pad. Then, put the pad in after so you can access the gauges from the top. After cutting and scraping all of my knuckles, I had them all mounted to the dash pad and plugged in.
The center cluster is much easier (probably because I made the wires a bit longer).
Took it for a drive for the first time this winter. So far so good. Hopefully the weather holds out tomorrow so I can go for a nice long drive to "break-in" the speedo
The center cluster gauges were a breeze to mount. They fit in the stock holes, and even rest at an angle towards the driver like the stock ones.
The speedo and tach are slightly more difficult since you need to fabricate a bracket to mount them to the factory bezels. Also, since all of the indicator lights are in the gauges, you have to come up with a way for those to still work. Heres what I did: I bought some LED's from radioshack. These are made for 12v applications and have a resistor built in. I drilled some holes in the top of the tach and speedo bezels and mounted them there. The red LED on the speedo is brights (radioshack doesnt make a blue one) green is left turn signal. The red on the tach is brake warning, green is right turn signal and the two oranges are shift lights
I used a classic instruments pulse generator for the speedo. Super easy to install, just run your wires to the dash, and screw it into the factory speedo cable location. Here it is mounted to my Muncie M20:
I found it easier to put the gauges in first- not mounted to the pad. Then, put the pad in after so you can access the gauges from the top. After cutting and scraping all of my knuckles, I had them all mounted to the dash pad and plugged in.
The center cluster is much easier (probably because I made the wires a bit longer).
Took it for a drive for the first time this winter. So far so good. Hopefully the weather holds out tomorrow so I can go for a nice long drive to "break-in" the speedo
