Custom gauges in a 1968 Dodge Charger
Here's a wiring schematic I made up to aid the install.
The gauges will sit in a custom made sheet aluminum (road sign) housing which will resemble the factory panel as closely as possible. The factory switches for headlights, wipers, etc will likely end up in their original positions. I'm not quite sure about that. The gauges are all Autometer Ultra-Lite, mostly because they are the only gauges I know of with a silver face, which is the look I was going for. Black is too boring and white stands out a bit too much. Carbon Fiber is way too modern for the car.
The only thing that I don't completely like about these gauges is that the tach goes to 10,000 rpm. Come on now, this is going in a 68 Charger, I'd be happy to see 6,000 rpm out of my big block. An 8,000 RPM tach would be much better.
So why am I going with a 160mph speedo in a car that will probably never see more than 120mph when I could just get the 120mph speedo? Well, two reasons. 1) The car came from the factory with a 150mph speedo and I have to at least go one better than that. 2) It's more impressive looking. See? It's not ALL about function :)
The tach and speedo have a 3 3/8" face while the 4 smaller gauges have a 2 1/16" face.
I've cut out a cardboard template to match the factory dash. I then cut out 6 paper circles, 2 large and 4 small, sized accurately to match the gauges. I set this up in the car and played with moving the circles around to find the layout that worked the best. My girlfriend thinks I'm insane. :)
What I've arrived at is that the factory gauge layout is terrible. I have completely changed the gauge positions, and most importantly, re-centered them on the steering column (i.e. the driver's eyes). Out of the 6 gauges, 3 are important and the other 3 are really important. The ones I want to see when I'm putting the car through its paces are: tach, oil pressure and water temp. The speedometer, volt gauge and fuel level are secondary. I've split these groupings down the center line, important on the left (which is what I can't see when I'm shifting) and really important on the right. Makes sense to me.
June 5 2002 - The gauges arrived today. Hopefully I can make some progress this weekend. They are beautiful. I made up the above wiring schematic tonight based on Autometer's instructions for each gauge. I also started making a list of supplies needed for the wiring, the construction of the dash panel itself it a separate job. At the very least I'll need 18 gauge wire in red, black, white and green... some heat shrink tubing to cover the soldered joints, a better wire stripper, a 4amp 3AG inline fuse, tape, etc... I want to make this install bullet-proof. I don't want to cut corners on these gauges. Especially since every wire in the car is factory perfect stuff, I don't want a hack job and I don't want to ever have to worry about loose connections and bad grounds. One thing that bugs me... the 4 smaller gauges each have a light bulb that is easily removable and come with filters to change the light color from clear to red or green. This is cool. I like the red lighting. The tach also comes with one of these filters, but the light bulb doesn't just twist out so I'll have to figure out how to change it. No big deal. But the speedo comes with two light bulbs and NO filters to change the color. Why? I don't want five red-lit gauges and one white one. I might have to call Autometer and see where I can get some of these filters.
June 6 2002 - A quick visit to AutoMeter's web site, followed by a visit to Summit's web site showed that you can get the bulb covers, in sets of 3 for $3.99. For example, a set of 3 red bulb covers is ATM-3214 in Summit's catalog (online). Wish I had known this at gauge ordering time. Now I need to come up with something else to buy from Summit so I don't waste shipping on a $4 item that has no weight at all! :)
June 22 2002 - Better late than never. I finally began actually working on the gauges today. In Steve's garage we made up the aluminum panel and now have the gauges mounted. Next will be the mounting points for the factory switches. Once that's done, then panel will get sanded, primed, speckled (for texture) and painted in a semi-gloss black. That will complete the dash panel itself, and the wiring will come next. I have everything pre-wired for the most part already. I have a couple of pictures that will find their way here eventually.
December 10 2002 - I've got one picture scanned now :) The project actually got done and installed in the car, but for some reason I never updated this page. Ooops.
