First, the gauges were dim and almost illegible at night. So, I removed the blue filters on the bulbs, which helped quite a bit. And I'll paint the inside of the gauge housing bright white to reflect more light. Plus, I'll replace the bulbs with LED's. All of which should make the original gauges easily visible.

In addition, the gauges weren't reliable. Turns out the ICVR was the culprit, so a new solid-state ICVR will be installed. Further, the ammeter was barely moving when the battery was being charged or discharged, so Rocketman turned an ammeter into a voltmeter.

But, given the notoriety of the stock gauges, I don't want to count on them for the longevity of my new engine, so will install some sort of additional gauges. One approach would be to put an oil pressure and coolant temp gauge in the pocket. After all, the work has already been done to draw it up and make the face plate. However, those gauges would be round and the factory gauges are rectangular, and that bothers me. So, I'm considering digital gauges to replace the digital clock, and controlling them with an Arduino or Pi microprocessor. And, the readout could include many more functions, such as outdoor air temp, carb inlet air temp, or anything else the little CPU can measure, including AFR. In addition, alarms can easily be set so that low voltage, high temp, low oil pressure, and so on would trigger something like the seatbelt buzzer and flash the out-of-range readout.


More on this as it progresses, but I'd love to see your ideas, so email me via the Contact form on the Home page, please.