BUILD THREAD Do I get a membership card now?

[81cutlass]

Too cold to diagnose the white smoke so I worked on the gage cluster.

I didn't care to have a clock in the dash since I will have one in the radio, and I wanted a tach, so let's get this started!

Had my 80 century cluster which is not being used at all
The 78 turbo regal cluster which I am using most of
Bought an 82 regal cluster out of a salvage yard which had the VSS output

82 regal speedometer is going in the 78 turbo regal cluster

1st I gutted one of the stock clock pods and bought a $32 bosch tach from autozone

Pulled it out of the bezel and ground the needle off

Removed the dial

The dial doesn't line up perfectly, oddly enough the hash marks dont look even on the bosch gage, drilled holes in the clock bezel

Cut the needle off one of the other speedometers

Needle, meet tach

Drilled it out

Bam!

Straight from china

Looks factory!

 

[81cutlass]

Put the cluster back in tonight and added the wires.

Vroom vroom, it works.

 

[TURNA]

Man that's awesome!!!

Nicely done!

 

[pagrunt]

I know this is an after thought to bring up but did you ever thought of putting the hour & minutes hands back on to add to the "clock"? Just sitting there it would be a run of the mill dead clock. Even could of used them for the red line indication.

 

[81cutlass]

I know this is an after thought to bring up but did you ever thought of putting the hour & minutes hands back on to add to the "clock"? Just sitting there it would be a run of the mill dead clock. Even could of used them for the red line indication.

I hadn't thought of that, and now you gave me something more to do! Haha! That is a real good idea.

My other problem is the factory boost gage is missing parts. It's supposed to be green, yellow, and orange lights but the pod is missing some of the factory parts and I would like more resolution than lights to tell me the boost level. Also, the factory switch and relay setup that sits under the hood is MIA obviously and I'd rather not buy three hobbs switches and all that garbage.

I could have my electrical engineering buddy program an arduino with a 0-5V input voltage given off from the stock 2 bar MAP and trigger some LED's, but thats a decent amount of work again for just lights.

My other option is to buy an AEM style digital boost gage and try to retrofit it into the stock turbo pod in the cluster. Problem there is I have to butcher the stock turbo pod which is A) rare and unobtainum and B) it says V6 turbo power which is WAY too cool to get rid of. Just seeing the turbo power decal makes me smile.

The AEM style has boost and vacuum, and it has the sweeping lights which I like, but it results in cutting the dash. Plus its $150 for some lights.....
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/avm-30-4406

Theres this $20 ebay one, it's got the sweepy lights and a digital readout which I like, but still kinda sucks that I have to rip the cluster apart
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-5...0001&campid=5335822911&icep_item=143031394061

The easy solution is to throw a $10 mechanical dial in the car and stuff it under the radio part of the dash, since I plan to put an oil pressure gage down there anyways, and I have a matching sunpro oil pressure and boost gage, but the boost gage is currently in my 2+2 and i would like to have a matching boost gage in the 2+2 to the AEM wideband, which means buy the AEM boost gage.

Blah, decisions to make a car look factory stock. :?

 

[Turbo Zach]

Good job so far. Maybe you can get a knock gauge and make it show through the factory boost lights? I bet you can't wait to drive it?

 

[81cutlass]

Thanks!

I thought about the knock gage but I plan to get a scanmaster for the car which does the same thing. TBD there I guess.

Yeah I am getting pretty antsy to drive it. This winter has been rough and it would be nice for the roads to clean up a bit and not be so icy. The cold weather has meant I have been decently productive since I have a heated shop and can't do anything else outdoorsy but I've about had it.



In other news- I got some brackets built for my DIN 1.5 radio to mount in the shaft radio dash, still need to finish running the speaker wires. The radio shop I stopped at said I was also out of luck getting and 4x10's to fit in the rear over the rear wheel wells. The speakers I have are like 1 3/4 tall and thats all the room I have, all the aftermarket ones I have seen are 2.5" tall.

And I did some digging on my white smoke issue and found my dipstick wasn't in all the way. It was about 3/4" hanging out of the block due to the dipstick being off the carb 4.1 and the GN must have used a different mount on the dipstick where it attaches by the exhaust manifold.

Cut the factory mount off and welded a washer on that puts it where it needs to be. Now the dipstick shows like over a quart over-filled so I''ll drain a quart out and see if that makes a difference. Hopefully its a combo of the rings not being seated and crank splashing the oil and just burning oil. Fingers crossed this fixes it.

 

[fleming442]

4x10s aren't a very good sounding speaker size, anyway. Maybe, some 6x9s or 6.5's in the rear side panels?

 

[blk7gxn]

Put the cluster back in tonight and added the wires.

Vroom vroom, it works.

BEAUTIFUL work!!!! Great IDEA!!! Something GM engineers should have put in the car in the 1st place!

 

[81cutlass]

Drained like 2 quarts of oil out today and it seems a lot better, not sure why it got filled up so much. I ran it a bit tonight but it was cold and dark and I think I ran it out of gas so it died on me.

I IR theromometer'ed the header tubes and #3 seemed cold but I had a hard time telling. It died before I got much diagnosed. It's going to be 40 tomorrow so it will be warm and I can get stuff done outside.

Finished up wiring the radio, good news

A) It fits
B) The display tuns on

Bad news

C) The damn radio doesnt turn on grrrrrrrr

Tried changing AM FM, pushing buttons, turning the tune and volume dials, nothing. Blah. I got it for $25 from the salvage yard so maybe its shot. Son of a...