Thought I would share this with you all. I was dismayed to find that it is virtually impossible to find instruments compatible with my sender units on the engine. Having to buy senders and instruments nearly doubles the cost and then there is the problem of engineering them into the systems along side the original. So I converted these old Smiths gauges to work on my installation and incorporated some personal touches at the same time.
I am dead pleased with them and felt that I should tell someone about them.



Nick
Rescued attachment Gauge 4.jpg

very nice. I am planning on doing the same with some stewart Warner Guages we bought for £7 each. Did you customise the faces your self??

They have had the faces stripped and painted and the graphics are printed onto OHP acetate which is in turn sprayed on the reverse side and glued onto the faces.

The innards are the standard Lancia units removed from the instrument cluster.

Are your Stewart Warner Gauges old or new items?

Nick

Fairly old, but never used. I have managed to source all the senders for less tha £30, so all in all it should cost me about £60 for the set (Merlin want over £200). Also i am using the motorbike instruments for the speedo and tacho, so i want to make new faces so they all match up, including my MK9R logo.

So let me get this right, you sprayed the face (and front bits) the cream colour, then printed (from a PC?) onto acetate, then stuck it on the front of the newly sprayed faces. I have found smewhere that does self adhesive clear film that can be printed on. They also do self adhesive water proof gloss photo paper.

they look good.

I had thought of trying to use ford 'inners' with a facia of my own making but gave it up as I knew I was no graphi artist.

Cost me 350 quid for my guage set as an alternative.

Bought em from a usa company

www.eguages.com

mine look like this :

atb

steve
Rescued attachment speedo.jpg

Very Smart Steve.

Nick

apart from the 350 quid bit

thats not too smart!

(My wallet did tho....)


I would have thought that there was a market for some kinda graphics / bezel kit for sierra guages - if the electrics could be fitted behind nice new bezels it could save loads!

atb

steve

Austen

I initially selected a colour from Halfords ( I don't buy much from Halfords normally) in my case there were 2 parts to the face as you can see I removed these and sprayed them in the colour. Then I obtained some OHP slide acetate which can be printed on by an ink jet printer, one side is slightly rough and the other side smooth. The rough side is the side to print onto. Before I printed on it I sprayed the back of the sheet and let it go dry, I would expect that if too much paint were put on it would flake off as it went through the printer so only a light coat was used. I designed the faces on Microsoft Publisher and printed them out on the rough side of the acetate.
The reason for spraying the reverse of the acetate is if it was left clear as it is glued to the gauge face the glue would show through. This way the only visible sign that there is a false face on the painted tin is a faint line above the forward face with the cut out in, this edge was cut to follow the shape of the cutout in the tin and now it only looks like a shaddow line.

Hope this helps
Nick

not to take away from peoples ideas, but i might be concerned that the ink from an inkjet printer would fade over time..?

I do agree with Steve that there seems to be a niche market for converting older gauges and saving £100's though.

Ned.

cheers Nick, will take that into account while doing mine

My mate is a graphic designer so he should be able to knock something special up and print it on a laser printer

Just to add, if a few people want new faces for a sieera clock, I spoke to bedford guages and they can make new faces (aluminium) up to what ever design for about 25 per set, but there is an initial setup and design cost of around £120.

I have a 1.6 pinto, and no gauges at all
I think that the Sierra only had a speedo, no tacho as stock
What are my options-
get the sierra speedo from a scrappy? what tacho to use? I dont fancy paying 200 quid ish if i can avoid it
Ive been offered a set of Blackbird bike clocks for £30- can I use these, and how do i interface between the transducer and the clocks?
aarrrggghhhh! brain exploding

My hope for the dials is to use the Sierra ones, but with more interesting graphics, I am hoping I may be able to separate the dials to move away from the Sierra laout but have not taken them out of the car yet - might this work?

I hope and plan to reuse my standard dials, so i certainly hope they seperate. I've had the back of the dash and i'm fairly sure the come apart. The speedo definitly does, so thats sorted. The rest can be bodged!

Hows it going Alan? I think the wiring loom on your sierra will include a wire for the tachometer, even if one isn't present, mine did. Maybe a better model in a scrappy will have one?

Maybe get the full dash from a sierra, that would be very cheap. Dont have a clue about the blackbird dials, someone will know though!

All the best anyway!

BTW, this is my 100th message! Yeah baby, yeah! Damn i must be bored to be there in 2 weeks!

Gotta admit, it will be a joke if it describes me as a senior builder! I think it does at 100..... ah well, dont believe a word of it!

No, it says builder, we're safe...

[Edited on 12/8/03 by JoelP]

higher model sierra have tachos.

atb

steve

"Smith Davison"? I thought your name was Nick Davison!

No, quite ingenious really. How thick is OHP stuff, I've never really studied it that closely?
I had some water slides/decals/transfers (depends on your global location) made up for me for sticking on some things I was selling. They're the same as the transfers you get in an Airfix kit. They would be ideal for this purpose, and weren't very expensive either.

water transfers would be a lot better providing you can get the graphics you want on them.
The OHP silde is fairly thin, about the thickness, or slightly less, of a business card. The good thing about it is that you can put any thing on it you want, so how about having a good looking scantily clad woman as the background for your rev counter!!
Or if you were realy clever having the acetate disc with the devisions on it un painted and mounted in place of the pionter and the pionter fixed!
Nick

I like that idea, very trick!!

Steve

You're right the better Sierras have tachos on them but the needle only travels about 120 degrees from 0 - 6000rpm and it looks distinctly "sierra".

The instrument panel on these is modular with the lesser instruments (fuel / temp) having legs that stick out of the back of the unit; the flexi pcb is clipped onto them at the back.

Question is, how to turn the sierra tacho into a full 280 degree movement?

My thought, following on from the fact that the tacho should be separable from the rest of the instruments, is to mount it at an angle - so 0 revs is at about 10 o'clock - at least it should look a bit better this way!

Out of interest why didn't you spray the back of the acetate after you had printed on it?

I like the acetate idea!

Has anyone got any idea's on how to create a nice bevel around the front edge to make the gauges look more like individual gauges?

The only reason for spraying the acetate first was to see if the paint would stick. It did and I then had a sheet which I could use.

Nick

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon Bradbury
Steve

You're right the better Sierras have tachos on them but the needle only travels about 120 degrees from 0 - 6000rpm and it looks distinctly "sierra".

The instrument panel on these is modular with the lesser instruments (fuel / temp) having legs that stick out of the back of the unit; the flexi pcb is clipped onto them at the back.

Question is, how to turn the sierra tacho into a full 280 degree movement?

---

Very Nice,

I was experimenting also,you can print the grapichs also on a polyester label, and this with a inktjet printer.The result is very nice.
But the problem with the Sierra dash stays tesame, ugli !! unles you find a casing for the instruments

Therefore I was looking around for some gauges at nice prices

Thake a look at theses sites

www.dolphingauges.com
www.ezwiring.com
www.haneline.com

Very nice instruments from 250 $ to about 400 $

The only problem for me is that temp is in °f instead of °c and that they all are MPH instead of KMH.

Somebody ase a sugestion about changing the dials from these gauges ??

[Edited on 20/8/03 by AvonBelgium]

[Edited on 20/8/03 by AvonBelgium]

I'm asking since one of the local yoof Saxo-Nova clan is scrapping an escort on sunday, and offered me anything off of it...
i'm on the lookout for clocks, tacho, fuel, speedo etc - should these be the same as came with the Sierra?
Any advice mucho appreciated!
Also- does anyone else want anything specific off it?

quote:

---

Originally posted by stephen_gusterson
they look good.

I had thought of trying to use ford 'inners' with a facia of my own making but gave it up as I knew I was no graphi artist.

Cost me 350 quid for my guage set as an alternative.

Bought em from a usa company

www.eguages.com

mine look like this :

atb

steve

---

another 'thread from the dead'!

The prices should be fantastic now as the exchange rate is about 1.85 compared to 1.45 when I bought from them!


Post wasnt stupid - from the point of view I cant remember it being significant now.... best is to ask them - they are helpful.

I personally didnt pay import tax - its a bit hit or miss. If its less than 22 pounds, there is no tax....... but your gages will be more than that! I have bought somethign in the past from USA (cant remember) that attracted approx 30 quid tax. Perhaps you can find charges on a uk customs web site?


getting your gauges from detroit is kinda cool.........


atb

steve