hey guys. well, you're looking at an official 2-day project from my garage. if you're on dial up - you might want to go get a snack or something.

i got some autometer gauges for christmas, and this nifty mustang cluster. wellll, i decided that the cluster might not give me such a clean install. instead, i decided to search honda-tech to see what other people had done. as suspected, a lot of poeple do the A-pillar pods, which i'm not wild about. another route people go is the all-out custom dash thing. some people do the fiberglas thing. some people do the sheet metal thing.

and then i found one lone guy that did a really neat install where he flush-mounted the gauges into the dash. i broke the news to my dad that the cluster thing wasnt gonna work. he took it well after seeing the thread on honda tech.

so then we set to work on the car. first thing i did was to mask off the area where i wanted the gauges to go:



next job was to start disassembling the OEM cluster to have access to certain wires. my dad was cheif of wiring operations, so i wasnt really all that clear on every last detail of what happened. but i DO know that part of this was because the gauges were wired into the lighting/dimmer switch. and also - the coolant temp gauge in the OEM cluster had to be disabled so the signal wouldnt interefere with the autometer gauge. so we had to take the OEM cluster apart. blah.



THEN we realized that we might be in trouble with getting the wires from the vent duct to the back of the dash. so we took the dash out. this took us about 3 hours. pretty tedious stuff making sure everything was kept unbroken.



ugh. a scary sight. i have a newfound respect for car-audio and show guys.



a view of the backside of the dash. for where the gauges were going, we were looking at routing wiring through the windshield-defroster duct.



setting up the positioning of the gauges. i lined them up with the center of the dash (which also centered them over a tray in the dash) ... then i centered the gauges between the top and bottom of the gray part. there are smaller holes below the centerline (these didnt look so good) so we decided to center the gauges.



looks like some clearancing may be needed .... a good job for a dremel!!



DAY 2:


does it look better in the morning.
NO!!



heres a shot of the wiring my dad was working on. he fabbed-up a connection point so that the gauges can be plugged and un-plugged if needed.



heres me re-installing the cluster. you can see the low-profile of the gauges in the dash (silver cups).



and here is the finished product!! looks MUCH cleaner than a pillar pod or a dash cluster!



i love the way it looks at night. and having it wired into the dimmer is just the icing on the cake! thanks for looking!

 

great writeup... my dial up took about 5 mins... lol

 

looks good..... nice job on the wiring

 

yeah man awsome write-up. very informative

 

Looks good... a-pilar for lazy ol' me.

 

A lot of effort went into that intall, but its clean! A lot of time can do wonders for installs

 

clean install

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 92integra_gs &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">great writeup... my dial up took about 5 mins... lol</TD></TR></TABLE>

May cabel took about 5 seconds

 

tag

 

I like it

 

Nice I'll have to keep this one in mind when I add the gages to my Rex

 

Damn man... that's one over-complicated way of doing it.

I have 4 gauges in there. I reached un der the dash, drilled a small hole, routed the wiresthrough a grommet that I pushed in, and with my skinny fingers hooked up the small plugs I soldered onto the gauges.
No problems with venting at all, and not counting the soldering it took me 30 minutes.

I'll post up pics tonight.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SETI20 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Damn man... that's one over-complicated way of doing it.

I have 4 gauges in there. I reached un der the dash, drilled a small hole, routed the wiresthrough a grommet that I pushed in, and with my skinny fingers hooked up the small plugs I soldered onto the gauges.
No problems with venting at all, and not counting the soldering it took me 30 minutes.

I'll post up pics tonight.</TD></TR></TABLE>

COOL! if you have an easier way, put it in here! it will be a great resource for people searching. i wish i could have done it an easier way but im happy with it.

 

wow that looks great. for the time you put into it the results seem like they were definately worth it.

 

Good **** man.............i like how that looks.

 

sweet writeup and nice install.

 

that's hot...i like it.....and the meters are relyaed on the dimmer too....that's nice.....My plan is to place the gauges where the center vent is....I think it would look sikk. But that setup right there is looking pretty friggin clean....

 

i was giong to mount mine in the dash, but i wanted something less permanent and since my turbo elimintated my ac i decided to mount mine in the center vent!



it still needs a little work, i might work on it today some

 

See that's exactly what i want to do.
Run four gauges in there.....
Boost/Oil temp/Voltage/air/fuel
Then right under that the Fmu
It's alot i know but i am pretty sure i can fit it all......

 

heres what they look like from the drivers seat

 

theres no way you could fit 4 gauges in there, and why do you want a voltage meter, thats hella lame, what do you mean fmu, you mount a fmu in the engine bay, unless you have some other idea of what a fmu is,

also i wouldnt waste your money on a a/f gauge, they are not accurate and there is no point in getting one, you need a wideband unit with a display,

just so turns out that the plx unit is almost the same size of the stock clock, so when im ready to get one thats most likely where i will put it!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by streetmodified &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

i love the way it looks at night. and having it wired into the dimmer is just the icing on the cake! thanks for looking!

</TD></TR></TABLE>

that ISHT looks bad ***! Specially cause I looked at it, and it was like looking at my own interior,same seats and even the radio. NICE WRITE UP!

 

Won't fit huh....



Sorry for the crappy pic. It's the only one I have. I was testing out my helmet mounted camera.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SETI20 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Won't fit huh....



Sorry for the crappy pic. It's the only one I have. I was testing out my helmet mounted camera.</TD></TR></TABLE>

note, he said he wanted to stick 4 gauges in the center air vent, not along the dash!

 

looks awesome! by why did you take the picture while you were driving (note 50 kph on speedo) ... or am i missing something.

anyway - thanks for all the positive feedback you guys. hopefully this thread will be useful to other people that are interested in this type of install. keep it going!!

 

Like I said... testing out the helmet-cam.
It's just accidental that the gauges are on the picture