Luis de Prat

I like Joe's concept best.

M758

Luis,
That looks nice, but you will have a parallax error on the oil temp gauge. I do to the level of probalbl 20F. Due to the angle when I look over I see the gauge at a severe angle making the needle apear to be at more temp than it really is.

Given the facy I don't have a good refernce for oil temp taken a the drain plug I works for what I need, but I would prefer one that was angled to so I could see straight on. It would need a compound angle. One for the slight layback in and one angled torward the driver.

It is in fact very easy to design and make in injection an mold. However I am not sure it can be done for a cost effective price given the low volume nature of this product. I might spend $50 for a nice injection molded replacment grate that had angled gauge pods. However I would not spend $50 for a thin thermo formed unit I had to glue on my stock grate. Now don't get me wrong it may take $50 to cover costs on this, but I would not spend $50 on it. Injection molded one may cost $100, but at $100 it is too expensive.

One thing that could be done might be to have two versions. One with gauge pods and one as a pure replacement. It replaces the grate with smooth finish no gauges. The grate always looked funny there with nothing behind it and not every one want to install extra gauges in street car. I move my oil pressure there since I don't have center console any more to save weight and need the oil pressure gauge someplace.

ideola

My issue is that I need two more gauge positions. I've temporarily removed the A/C control **** to put in a voltmeter. But I'm planning to get the A/C working again, and I want to add an oil temp gauge. My plan is to put the OEM oil pressure and a VDO oil temp gauge in the speaker grille location, then put the volt meter, A/C controls, and OEM clock in the stock 3-gauge console. I have my PLX gauges in the a-pillar.

JohnKoaWood

Tell Lo-Tek to reproduce the tabs, and either plastibond or sonic weld them to the thermo formed ABS (or is it HDPE, as HDPE is only slightly more expensive but your part is small), it is a tried and true meathod... take a picture of the tabs and I can tell you haw difficult it will be for them to bond onto your piece... FWIW, 50% HDPE and 50% Acetone = HDPE GLUE for bonding pieces together that will be 90% as stong as the base material...

not sure how the tabs look or work as both my cars are late interior cars... but I do like the concept, and have been thinking of something along the same lines on my late interior when I recover my dash... but mine will most likely be FG covered with vinyl along with the rest of the dash for seamless look...

I would look to Lo-Tec to reproduce the tabs so the factory grill can be completely replaced, and can be re-installed if needed...

I, for one, am HAPPY someone out there is thinking outside the box, and isn't tied to the friggin A pillar pods that every Honda and Nissan is running arround with (I don't like A pillar pods, but I think you guessed that by now), but then I am the one who hacked apart a factory gauge cluster to make it what I wanted, and I'm not quite finished with it... But at least I have an aftermarket boost gauge IN my cluster and not on a A pillar pod....

ideola

Here's an idea that just came to me. I recently installed some 1" kicker tweeters into the 941. They come with these slick little angled bezels for doing a flush mount arrangement. Each tweeter has two of these angled bezels, on for in front of the surface and one for behind. The bezels allow the tweeter to be mounted on an angle, and they are fully "rotatable" to achieve the desired aspect. Here's what the bezel looks like (top item)


So, why not have some of these made in a 2" version to accommodate a standard 2" / 52mm gauge. You could also make a flat version like the lower one in the photo above. Then, either modify the stock speaker grille, or make a replacement piece exactly like it, like this one posted earlier...

...and use the bezels to allow the user / installer to put the gauges in as desired. This approach would accommodate folks who don't mind their gauges being flat, and would also accommodate both LHD and RHD cars.

Don't know about cost effective, but maybe something along these lines would allow the flexibility to accommodate all the various tastes that have been expressed so far...
Thoughts?

JohnKoaWood

Why not have them make a bezzel to mount the Zietronix DashDAQ into?

harrisonrick

I think this is the bees knees for this project ideola. Those tweeter rings plus the flat panel Luis posted would make the perfect combo...you could angle the guages either for right or left drive cars, thus eliminating the incorrect readings of just a flat guage mounted there.

Good investigation!

edit- i`m a big fan of add-ons looking like they belong. And this does.

Mike C.

I think it was a good effort but for a street car it just doesn't look very asthetically pleasing. I would suggest something that it much closer to flush with the dashboard with only the top portion of the gages pushed out to tilt them toward the driver. If this could be done with higher quality molding I suspect many of us would be willing to shell out more (maybe $100)?

ideola

Solution for the bezels found. Contributed by a 924board.org member:

JerryW

I'd like to see something more along the lines of the pictures Joe and Luis posted (with the addition of the bezels from Summit it will work well). I do need to add a couple of gauges and something like this would have my interest. At $50 I'd be looking at the fit and finish much closer and it would need to be complete rather than an add on to my self-provided grill.

macho_mango

I am not a huge fan of the look, personally I think it doesn't match the rest of the 944 interior. Thats just my opinion. Maybe if it was a bit more subtle or in line with the rest of the dash?

genikz

I made something similar using PVC and bondo. I personall think it's the best place for critical guages, since you can see them out of the corner of your eye and don't have to take your eyes off the road; mine are oil pressure and oil temp.




More pictures in the link in my sig.

I would pay $50 for a similar pre-fabbed pod though, since it took me probably 8 hours at least to fab mine up, and it's a little rough around the edges still.

JohnKoaWood

I only have 2 words for you..

Dremel Tool

That is all...

blown 944

I like the combination of having the angles incorporated into the flat panel rather than the raised idea.

Very nice. I would get one if it were available.

blown 944

Is he one here??

I just noticed one of the gauges was a boost gauge