Gauge Swap Out
 

When I got the car it came with aftermarket indeglo gauges. My question is how hard is it to put these in and what are the steps?

Anyone? Anyone?

Nevermind i already did it. It wasnt that hard, not to many screws.

heh, I couldnt have answered your question anyways...my new gauges just shipped today..I think Im going to have em before the weekend! wooties!

Ya its really simple. I took the cluster out and replaced them in the house lol. You have to be careful on the oil pressure guage though. whe you pull out the two small screws on the guage there is a backing plate behind it. You have to take the whole gauge out and repalce the guage then put the small screws in the put the gauge back in the cluster.

Thanks, I will make note of it.

I might photo my process and post it as a mod writeup

Sounds good. It says on my guage box to color out the needles if they are a bright color. I wonder if that would be a good idea or not.

I wondered about that, but my concern is how are the needles gonna sho up at night? are they just gonna be a silhouette? I plan to see what mine look like day and night before I mod and needles.

I did just see on Ebay last night a set of clear needles for the Surpa N/A (though since they are just needles I dont see why they wouldnt work on a Turbo, same number of needles right?) I wonder what clear would look like...

The needles wouldnt come off for me. In my guage kit it says if the needles have to be removed have a professional do it.

Well, as I expected, my gauges got here before the weekend. I put em in last night and Im already in love with em.! Here are the day/night pics.


http://home.comcast.net/~kthaney/files/gauge1.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~kthaney/files/gauge2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~kthaney/files/gauge3.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~kthaney/files/gauge4.jpg



Pretty easy mod...I took my time and was careful...except the part where I forgot you advice on the oil pressure gauge and fooled around with that for 30 minutes before I got it right. lol

Now all I need is a new steering wheel, or new leather cover and Im good to go. I ordered some new ultra-suede and Im going to redo my door panel inserts with a solid color instead of that 80's checkerboard.

im dying of envy

weezl did you replace the bulbs also? and how much did those gauges with the supra sign run you?

were they meant for the mk4, or they were made for the mk3?

Good job, Those are a little diffrent than mine. On mine the whole gauge lights up. The orange needles dont lok bad on there. I dont think I will color them out.

Yes, I replaced the stock gauge bulbs too. I used bulb #168 (brighter than the 158's that are stock. I used the Blue version, but at first those didnt light up very blue, so I bought some transparent blue model paint and put a coating on them to make them "blue'er". With the reverse gauges, the stock bulbs only light up the needles and the odometer/trip.

After seeing it in the daylight, I have decided Im going to take my gauges back apart and use that same transparent blue paint on the top of the needles. This will make them glow blue'er at night and during the day they will contrast with the white backgrounds better.

I ordered em special made. they are Mk3 guages, with a custom logo added in. Total cost was 97.50 which was a bit pricey, but I am still happy with em...look great on my white/blue scheme

o aight cuz a shop told be about the same price, not copying you but its white and blue too, im sori but my car came in white too lol

Im going to paint mine white :P

:umno:


copycats!



:werd:

White shows less dings and dirt.

So how did you wire them up? I am not sure where to wire them in at.

Ahh yes, good question my young apprentice! I wanted mine to come on with the regular dash lights so I spliced into the harness that feeds power for the stock gauge lights. I would imagine all years are the same but I have no way to be sure, but for me the wire was green and it was in the set of wires that go to the big plug farthest left (as your looking at the gauges still installed).

in case your wire is a different color, here is how I figured out which wire it was:
When you look at the printed circuit "board" on the back of the gauges, there are circuits that go to the stock gauge lights. Both sides of the light circuits (green socketed ones) lead back to the harness. One side of that is the ground and one side is the feed. I guessed and tried the green/white wire and found that when I dimmed my stock lights the new gauge lights got brighter and vice-versa. So obviously it was the other one (in my case it was a solid green wire). This is 12V power and not connected to the dimmer, so you can dim the new lights independent of the old ones.


Oh, forgot to mention this is where you splice in the red wire from your new regulator. Also on the back of your gauges you will see some screws with text next to them. One of those says "earth" so I just put a ring clip on my ground wire and connected it there on the back of the cluster (depending if your Turbo or not they may have wires going to them, but mine didnt). Or you can just run the ground to the chassis somewhere.

Have you guys ever heard of putting a digital dash in ? I've seen some non-supras with digital dashes, even one that projects the spedometer onto the windshield .

That'd be neat to find.

Ive had digital dashes in the past on different cars and never really liked em. I prefer needles. I know at least the Grand Prix has a HUD that projects the speed to make it appear out in front of the windshield.

Also some Supras came with digital clusters, but I dont think they came in the US at all

Cool, thanks weezl. That would make sense to me.