79-86 guage mounting. lets see what youve come up with.

[woodyy24]

ive got nothin. im looking for ideas for guage mounting. the 87-93 cars have a whole bunch of pod options but theres nothing for the 79-86 cars.

im going to get a cowel panel with the 2 guage pods in it. (my cowel panel is facked from the hood flying up anyway) and im also going to get a monster tach but dont really have any idea as where to mount it.

ive seen someone utilize the space above the glove compartment for 3 smaller guages and it looked really good, but it seemed a tad far from the driver seat and would take your attention away from the road. i like to be able to just glance and see my guages.

 

[Hissing Cobra]

Both my brother and I mounted our guages in the front of the center console (where the diagram of the car and the idiot lights are). Basically, my brother removed that piece, took a piece of aluminum and bent it, then cut the holes for our 2" guages. He kept his in the natural aluminum state, while I painted mine Black. We also mounted our 5" Tach's on the dashpad and our fuel pressure guages on the cowl.

 

[N8Miller]

i am going to do an autometer gauge swap in my car hopefully this spring.

follow this link:
http://www.flemworld.com/Hto/gauges.html

there is a guy on here with a 79, cant remember his SN, but have him saved on my buddy list that did the swap. he should chime in with some pics, i have them saved also.
I cant post the pics, they are too large.

 

[Dean85GT]

No big tach for me. Im just going to run a shift light on the column. Also I have 3 gauges in front of the shifter

 

[noslow1986]

florida 50 sells a kit that goes were the factory ones are looks nice on the web site

 

[bstrd86]

I'm doing the Autometer swap as well, but I'm using the 5" tach and speedo. Using these means the other gauges have to moved out, so I glued a piece of carbon fiber over the factory bezel (mine was pretty bad anyways). The rest of my gauges should be here aound Tues. or so. I had a little carbon fiber left over so I made an overlay for the passenger side and I'm working on one for where the information center used to be. I'll be mounting my boost controller and wideband there. I'll need a pillar pod for my boost gauge, and my fuel pessure is going in my cowl hood. I'm making a tube that the gauge will fit in, and I'm going to epoxy it in the back of the cowl induction area and paint it along with the hood. Here's a couple of pics of what I have so far:

 

[N8Miller]

bstrd86: can you produce the kits and sell them? thats a nice thing ya got going on there..... but can i get one w/o the checkered theme.

florida 50 sells a kit that goes were the factory ones are looks nice on the web site

yes, but they are $750-800!

 

[Hissing Cobra]

I agree! I like that Carbon Fiber overlay. Was it expensive? It looks like a professional job and it definitely does not look like rice. It would match my Carbon Fiber steering wheel nicely.

 

[alanw6]

I followed the same overlay idea as above, but used a brushed aluminum finish instead of CF (which looks great, btw).

Hoping to get some installed shots soon; the car is away getting some more work done to it.

 

[bstrd86]

Yours looks good too, I was going to make one out of aluminum but since I have the Ultra Lite gauges I figured it would look kind of bland.

Hissing Cobra I paid around $50 for the piece of carbon fiber, but I bought a big piece in case I messed up. You might get by cheaper than that.

N8miller I don't think I could do them in a timely manner, working full time and painting cars on the side kinda keeps me busy! So I'll tell you how:

Take a piece of paper that is large enough to cover your gauge cluster, and use a pencil or crayon to color over the paper. You want to kind of press down because you are trying to get the image of the cluster to transfer to the paper. Once that's done you can lay out your new gauge holes on your pattern using a different colors so you'll know what to cut out. Then you can transfer your pattern to whatever material you want to use and cut it out. I didn't cut the new holes in the cluster until I had epoxied the overlay on, but I guess you could do it however you want.

You could use any material you want, the carbon fiber is going to have a checkered pattern. You could do it with aluminum or sheet plastic, or whatever you want. You could even paint it body color if you want. Like I said initially I was going to go with aluminum and then engine turn it (like older Trans Ams) but w/aluminum gauges I didn't think it would look good, but it's all up to you.

Aaron

 

[alanw6]

If you don't mind sharing, I'd like to know where you found a piece of CF that large for $50! I'll be purchasing them immediately!

 

[bstrd86]

I got it off ebay.

 

[blueoval84]

Hey guys,
I'm not one to plug another product but check out www.mc-machine.com
Found them off the foureyedpride website. An excellent board w/ lots of info.
The mc-machine looks like a well thought out piece of aluminum. Uses 2-5" gauges(Autometer recommended) and 4- 2 5/8".
Retails for about $150 . They have 1 for 79-86 and 1 for 87-93

Hope this might help or at least give you some ideas.

Lee

 

[795.0pacecar]

Im not a big fan of having gauges plastered all over the dash and outside the car so I put mine in the stock location, along with a dual pillar pod.