Ok, so this is my first fairly legitimate modification that I feel worthy of posting. I took some design cues from Willie and his 747 inspired interior especially the digital ashtray gauges, and decided to make a small lamp to be used in place of the shift indicator on a 5-speed Camaro shift plate. I'm pleased with how it looks so far although it still needs a few tweaks to look just right, but I'll explain the general process for anyone who wants to try it!

At first I was going to buy some lexan, but I actually just took the plastic out of a junk picture frame I got at goodwill. So much cheaper and it works just as well.

The size of the gear indicator on the plate is 1.25" x 1.25" so I cut it down allowing for a few millimeters of margin. This creates our lens:



^^^ This piece is a scrap that I had, but I hit the production piece with some high grit sandpaper and some rubbing compound to take out the heavy scratches.

Now in order to do this next step you must be willing to completely sacrifice any kind of value your plate may hold. I got mine for 5 bucks at the yard and it had several large cigarette burns on it. I bought it specifically to experiment with so, no flaming

That said, you need to make a hole in the middle of the indicator, I used a drill press but a handheld drill should work fine too. The point of this is to just make a pilot hole for the jigsaw in the next step.

Placing the jigsaw blade in the hole, I cut the whole indicator out going almost to the very edge so there was only a little bit of a plastic lip remaining.
I then used a various files to remove the lip:



(I will note that it's very hard to get flush and true edges from the ABS and obviously it looks kind of crappy when left like this. I'm keeping my eye out for some kind of small plastic bezel to hide the edge.

Okay. So now we have a clear plastic "lens", a modified (or ruined depending on your view) shift plate, and now we need to make a logo.

At some point in time, I want to do the infamous T-56 swap so I figure a
little shameless advertisement wouldn't hurt

I designed a stencil in Photoshop after a similar shift **** I had seen:



Some notes:
You can use any logo really, but unless you are screen printing with emulsion,
get one that is solid and/or easy to cut out with a razor blade.

- Due to the placement of the stencil, it is also very important to print it in reverse. (in PS it's easy, just use Edit - Transform - Flip Horizontal)

- Next I printed the stencil on a generic sticky label and cut out with a FRESH razor blade:



Apply logo to the back side of the lens and spray with several coats of black paint. You finished piece should look a lot like this:



Alright, now for the light assembly. I used a 12v lamp/holder I had kicking around which I mounted inside a dome light cover. (also painted black, but not absolutely necessary)



At this point if you try everything out, the whole lamp can be seen through transparent portions of the lens. To alleviate this I used another sticky label cut to size to fit over the dome cover, essentially creating a diffuser. You can also apply the paper to the actual back of the lens itself, but I found this works better:



I didn't do this but retrospectively, it might be a good idea to put tinfoil on the inside of the dome if your light is kind of weak.

Now all our pieces are complete and it's time to put it all together. Permanently mount the lens to the back of the plate, and mount the "diffuser" to the back of the lens.
The final product should look like this:



Oh yeah, let it shine baby! Because I would still have the gear indicator pigtail from the auto trans after the swap, I'm just going to use this to wire the light in.

Hope you guys liked this, let me know what ya think!

-Jack

 

Not bad man. Ive seen digital ones telling you what gear you are it as well. Still this is pretty cool still. If I didnt have a stuart warner RPM / shift light gauge on my pillar id do this for sure. Good job man

 

Too cool. I had my gauge cluster out yesterday and wondered if anybody had done anything lie this.

 

Thanks for the compliments! I think I'm going to do this over using some actual colored transparent lexan or acrylic sheet. I think it may produce a higher quality piece.

 

Looks good man-nice idea.