hey great J

where are your blinkers located at and high beem light? i was going to invest in the covans setup. the harness offered by covan, is that just to wire up the blinkers and beams? from what i've read, thats what it looks like. i really don't care if they are on the dash, just want the beams and the blinkers to work outside, since i need my car for a daily driver. did you use the electric or mechanical guages in your setup? i'm looking for something i can just plug into the engine(water temp, oil pressure ETC.), and run the line to the guage on the inside. suggestions?

 

Covan's Wiring is to connect the Autometer Guages To the IP harness in the car. and also the bilnkers

 

I used 4 LEDs in the blank panel below the headlight switch for turn signal/high beam/foglight indicators. I used all electrical gauges in the dash, and mechanical Fuel Press and Nitrous Press with the A/F ratio gauge in the 3-pod A-pillar. I don't like the 3-pod pillar though....it has some fitment issues with the dash pad. I'll probably make a panel (similar to the dash panel) to mount them above the radio instead.

The trouble with Autometer's electrical gauges is that you have to use their sender because the calibration is different. If you hook one of their gauges up to a stock sender it won't read accurately. This means you have to swap out all your stock senders for the Autometer ones.



Anybody wanna buy an A-pillar for 3 gauges?

 

No, but I wouldn't mind buying a cluster plate from you, if you decide to make and sale them.

 

so for the blinkers did you just splice into the factory wiring and run it to the LEDS? i'm a bit confused on running the blinkers and an aftermarket fuel guage. i know i will have to use the aftermarket senders, one reason why i want to go aftermarket. all my old stuff is on my previous motor that i gave away. the 2nd reason is that i do not have a guage cluster in the car

 

I didn't splice anything into the factory wiring. What's left of the factory wiring is laying in a pile in the corner of my shed. I literally rewired the entire car from the battery up. The only wires I didn't yank out are the ones that run down the inside of the steering column. Basically, I didn't like the way GM wired things, and I had changed most of it anyway, so I just did it my way from scratch.

Anyway, it would be perfectly possible to just splice the LEDs into the stock wiring if you used the correct size resistor to drop the voltage. The size of the resistor depends on the voltage/current ratings of the LED.

When you go to order the Autometer fuel gauge, you just get the one that's calibrated to work with a GM sender. It's a 0-90ohm sender. The good news is, you should be able to use your stock wiring for all the gauges. Just hook the stock wire to the Autometer sender and hook the gauge to the same wire at the dash end. You have ignition power and ground (as well as a dimmed light input) right there in the factory harness anyway. You'd just have to extend the wires a few inches or waste...ahem...invest the money in the Covan's setup.




I seriously doubt that I'll try to market the panels....it took too much custom work to make it fit right. The trim around the panel had to be modified (because my panel is flat and the factory plastic is curved) and I had to make the brackets to mount it up. That involved drilling on the dash behind the panel and it's still a real pain to get on and off. I'd have to come up with a different bracket setup (something to work with the stock mounting locations) and then I'd have to sell it with the modified trim because the cutting required is a bit tricky.....which means I'd have to find a bunch of trim pieces to modify. In my mind, it's too much trouble to justify the potential profit.