well i finaly got pics of my gauges..while doing my white face gauges, i broke my tach and due to money, i got the sunpro
drag n tach..it retails for 100 but sunpro has it onsale for 25!! ohh well it works, it be better if it was a white face tach, but ohhhhh well, i like they way it looks.., you can even see my MSD install on the kick panel... well here are pics! what do you all think?

 

close up

 

another...last one

 

Looks good! I have a couple of questions.

1. What paper did you use?
2. How did you break your tach?
3. How hard are the guages to install?
4. Where did you get that Sunpro Tach?
5. Did you have to modify the guage bezel to put that 5" tach in there? Did you not want to mount it on the dash?

All in all, I like it. I am about to do the same thing to mine. I've had the guages sitting in my center console for the longest time and I'm just afraid that I'm going to majorly F$*^ something up.

Steve

 

ok..well this was the 2nd time i did this..i had to fix my first time mess ups...its not easy at all, i spent alot of time on these things. the first time i attempted to do these i used HW photo gloss paper, then glued it to the back of a CD label, then stick the label on stright...well there are problems with that procedure.......no matter waht i did, the paper always wrinkled when the glue dried..i put close to non...alot...half and half...put them in books for days..blah blah blah!!! i just couldnt get it to where i wanted it. so the second time around (and final) i desided to print it all out on transperancy paper, then i glued 2 cd lables to eachother (so when you pell the stuff off its like double sided tape)..then i put them on my gauges, peeled back the front and stuck the transparency on there. sound complicated?? lol..you HAVE TO BECAREFUL WITH THE NEEEEDLES!!!! i broke my speedo and had to get a new cluster!!! then i dont know what happend to my tach...but it dont work anymore (the factory one)..so i went to http://actron.com/cgi-bin/web_store....d=8262634_9374 and ordered that tach ..i didnt have to modify the cluster/bezel at all acutly, i just put a good about of tape around the housing of the tach and slid it in nice and snug! i hate tachs on the dash and all that crap unless its absolutly necesary. plus my dash is in mint condition, and there is no other place to put it, and the built inshift light is im my line of sight... if you try to do this.. make sure you give your self TIME!!! dont rush this at all,, thats where you will **** up.....

 

i forgot to add..what the crap do people do to the stock tach after they get a aftermarket one? i mean,, i didnt want to look at a broken tach!..then you get people that ask "why you got 2 tachs??"

 

"i forgot to add..what the crap do people do to the stock tach after they get a aftermarket one? i mean,, i didnt want to look at a broken tach!..then you get people that ask "why you got 2 tachs??"


Exactly..... the only draw back to an aftermarket tach, here is my gauge setup with my DIY white face gauges as he said they SUCK i have to re-do mine like you did yours that sounds like a real good idea, i had the same trouble with the paper wrinking up and my needles hitting the paper and not wanting to move, it gets really frustrating becasue those gauge clusters are not the easiest things to remove, i found it to be much easier to take it out of the vehicle and bring it inside your shop to work on it

 

yeah i took it out and worked on it inside. are my instructions simi understandable? or do i need to go more in depth with them?? ohh also, i really like your interior!!,, but what do you plan on doing with the stock tach?

 

yeah your instuctions are understandable just takes some time to get everything right... also those needles are so damn brittle that i decided to just make the holes bigger and slide them over the needles instead of removing them.... i dont know if your talking to me about what im going to do with my stock tach... but for now i will have 2 working tachs... i think i might try to incorpate my autometer into the stock tach location and put my shift light into my cigarette lighter spot since there is no smoking allowed in my car anways.

 

yeah i was talkin to you...that be kewl to put your tach in there..if i couldnt put my tach in there, i couldnt figure out what i was gonna do...the only thing i could think of was some kind of clock..one of my friends told me to put a fish in there!! that be sweet! lol

 

LOL yeah that would be some crazy stuff putting a fish in there LOL... yeah i would like to put my tach in the dash like you did i think that looks pretty slick. What did you use to paint your needles orange?

 

actualy they are red. i used model paint....put a Flux Compasitor in there! screw the fish.

 

It almost seems to me that it would be easier to get another guage cluster from a junkyard, put on the guages, and then swap the new guage and the original guage. Does this make sense? Or is there something that I am completely missing? How hard is it to disconnect and reconnect a guage cluster?

Steve

 

oh, just another question, do your guages show up well at night?

Steve

 

ohh they show up WELL at night, hold on a min and ill go snap a pic ..i highly recomend getting another cluster to work on, but make sure they work before you get them. taking these things out is easy, but at the same time a pain in the ***. you have to take your dashpad off, lower dash panel on the passenger side, and other stuff that i dont know what the names are, lol.then when you get the cluster unscrewed, you have to put your hand behind it and umplug the speedo cable.

 

these pics really make it look like $hit ...the tach lights up more,, but not much, the light on that thing pretty much sucks. they look alot better at night in person, trust me.

 

Those look good. You should write a whole article on 82-84 Trans Am guage installs. I think that would help us all out. I'm almost second guessing if I want to do my guages or not. It sounds like there is a lot of interior dismantling involved.

Steve

 

its actrualy not hard to take apart the interior.. just a little time consuming....but i can have it all off in 5 min and back on in 5 min now

p.s..any notice my turn signals?

 

Yeah i thought i noticed something about your turn signals? Did you clear out the lenses instead of green??? Is there a way to color the bulbs so that you can get a different color to light up the guages? Like, a real thin coat of latex based paint??? I dunno. I have a ghetto friend that puts colored syran wrap over his headlights to make them shine a different color. It's pretty sweet actually.

Steve

 

actualy i jsut stuck a reb bulb in there and thats how it turned out. i tried getting the green film off...it didnt wnat to... to change the color...if you havea firebird your gonna have to spray paint the back of the gauges white, seeing they are red/orange from the factory..then put differant colored light bulbs in there OR, you can try to just spraypaint the back the color you want and see how it turns out.