AutoMeter Phantom Gauge Install

So a Lot of people comment on my Gauge Cluster and ask me where I got it at, WELL I MADE IT !

SO, Here is a little about How I went about doing it so far, Its still not done and I dont suggest just anyone doing this. My car is purty much stripped down to nothing. Im building it into a strip car thats just barly legal for on the street, Im only keeping what I need to to keep it legal. The main reason I did this on my car was I have an Accel DFI computer system in my car to run the engine, so I pulled the factory harness out of the car along with the factory computer. well in that harness is all the wires for the factory gauges and the factory computer drives the speedo. so instead of trying to hack the harness up just to use the factory unaccurate gauges I decided to build my own.

 

For anyone else thinking about trying this I dont know for sure if you need to pull the heater ducts behind the dash or not., all the stuff was out of my car before I decided to do this, I know these gauges are deeper that the factory ones and needs the back of the dash cut out.

 

I started out with 16ga weldable steel

I just took the stock bezel and used that for a pattern, I left the factory clear panel on for this step to keep everything straight.I used air sheers and nibblers to cut everything out.

After I had everything cut to about how it needed to be I drew a line inside the bezel so I knew where the gauges could be laid out at, and started to draw out straight lines to keep everything even. and started to drill holes for the LEDs and stuff that was going in there. I used a 2 inch hole saw bit in my drill press for the 2 1/16 gauge holes and a 3 1/4 hole saw for the 3 3/8 gauges, they hold out farly close till you file them out.

I covered everything in carbon fiber after painting the surface just to keep it from rusting.

 

I used a second dash I got out of a donor car for fitment of the cluster into the car instead of working in and out of my car and trying to weld mounting tabs on the back of it, I had the whole dash cut apart and reinforced with steel rods to keep that square as well.

Now for fitting it into the car, like I said above I dont know it it would fit with the heater tubing back there or not but I had to cut the back of the dash out for them to fit in there.

 

now for the fun part the wireing

I used what ever I could out of the stub thats left for the gauges, well let me back up here, above I stated that the factory harness has the gauge wires in there. theres a plug under the passanger kick panel where is stubs off at for some of the stuff, so the wires are still behind my cluster and used for stuff like the turn signals and high beams, fuel level, voltage, I cut an old cluster apart and saved the terminal that plugs into the harness and sodered the wires onto there so the cluster can be removed with just unplugging it, it looks like a mess and it is but it works.

Some installed pics

 

NOTE::

the alternator power wire is run off the gauge cluster, that wire has to be hooked up to a switched ignition source for the alternator to charge.