84Grn

iTrader: (1)

Thought I would give you guys the link for those who has 82-92 camaros. Wish they would make one for firebirds too

Price may look too high but does that look sweet

www.covansclassic.com

85_ZED28

wow those do look sweet!

way to expensive though!

86IROCNJ

Welcome to last year! lol J/K man, over in the Body and Interior section there is a thread of this same exact bezel from the same guys. Maybe you could check it out. I am doing the same thing but i am making it. I called them for a wiring harness but they never got back to me. I would however like to see one of those in a car. later

MdFormula350

nice looking!!

BRIrocZ

iTrader: (1)

Well, I've never seen it before so thanks! Looks pretty sweet!

Kingtal0n

Like mine? Took like 2 hours. Still missing electronic speedo (UL) and an UL tach. coming in 2 weeks to a car not so near you.

86IROCNJ

Are those blue lights the ones out of Jegs? The ones you are using for turn signals. thanks

Kingtal0n

yes! jegs 3/8 blue light things... work good too. dont put them that high though, they interfere with the plastic around the cluster. i had to use a dremel to remove the offending plastic before they would go all the way in.

86IROCNJ

Hey, thanks for the warning! lol I have been looking at those lights for a couple of months now. I just have not seen them up close, until now. I think i'll pick up a pair.

Kingtal0n

if I was going to order new ones, i would get a different color than blue. not that blues BAD, just that the rest of my guages are RED and i think a nice purple color would look real nicer. I just hate over-doing the RED you know? Red guages, red lights inteior, red tail lights... heh...

I figured BLUE would look nice.. and it DOES... but blue is blue... and red is over-done... and YELLOW is WAYYY overdone for Turn signals... so purple

Camarokid01

I want to do the same thing as you did kingtalon, how did you go about doing it? you made your own panel and bought all electrical guages I am guessing, and then bought the little lights for the turn signals, but how did you go about hooking up all the gauges, did you buy a wiring harness from that covan classics place? and how are you going to hook up a speedo? and if it isnt too much to ask could you tell me what size gauges those all are? and one more thing did you have to cut out any of the plastic to fit the gauges or the tach in there?

Sorry for all the questions, it's just your guages look bad *** and I want to do the same thing

Kingtal0n

well i wrote how idid it before, but i cant find it. so ill write it again. pay attention this time dammit!hehehe.

first thing is to get rid of the factory crap. theres alot of wiring and plastic behind that darn factory cluster. lots. i left the wiring because thing pre-wired for me (like turn signals and head temp) were already there. I re-used them for my little jegs lights.

I use as many MECHANICAL guages as possible. that would be water, oil, and boost if your taking notes. the rest obviouselly cannot be mechanical (i would like to see a mechanical volt meter. Hah!)

anyways, the aluminum is just a 1/8" thick piece I found in my dad's backyard. he has LOTS of it. I cut a piece out with a grinder.

I then used the factory cover to draw and cut-out a piece of aluminum that fit. i did the same for the SCREW holes.

the GUAGE holes, obviouselly, I did not re-use. I made up my OWN spot for them. i used a jigsaw to cut the holes, then a dremel to smooth them out. when the guages fit tightly i stopped with the dremel.

then it was just like any other install, I ran the guages to the appropriate places, water temp to manifold (worst one, had to run mechanical sender through the firewall and around the engine to the manifold. ) oil pressure to the oil sender, etc...

I used the factory fuel level sender wire, and factory turn signal wires. for the lighting I just re-used the factory switched 12V+. there are several of those behind the cluster. it was not a HARD install, just time consuming. most of the plastic behind my homemade aluminum interfered with the guages. I spent maybe 2 hours just lightly grinding the plastic so my Ultra-lites would fit.

to make the aluminum look pretty I first wire brushed the HECK out of it, then i used a WIRE WHEEL to really smooth it out. then I lightly sanded it to remove burrs, Clear coated it to keep it from tarnishing, and siliconed it to finish it off.

The speedo will be simple, but expensive. Im getting the 5" 160 MPH Ultra-lite ELECTRONIC speedo. I already have the $60 sender. It hooks right into the sender that i hook right into the tranny. Easy. and its electronic, no hard wire to run. simple. and then it calibrates to any gear ratio you want it to, and can be-re-set every time i change a tire size If i want.

I needed a grinder, jigsaw, aluminum piece, wire wheel, dremel tool, clear coat paint, and about 5 hours TOTAL. also needed the guages, as you can see, I still need 2. actually 3, if you count the fuel pressure guage.

fb305svs

I was thinking about doing this same exact type of a thing with my firebird panel. Just haven't had the time or money. I wanted to be able to keep the stock bezel, but put in my own set of guages.

The issue you run into on the firebird is my whole gauge clusted actually sets into a plug of sorts, which then goes to a printed circuit pieces thats laid against the back of the cluster. I could see trying to figuer all that out to be pretty time consuming.

Certainly would look damn badass tho!

Steve

86IROCNJ

I'm doing basically the same thing but all of my guages are electric. I used all of the same guages that came with the car. I am doing something a little different though. I ordered a couple of pre wired plugs, this way i can just dis connect the plug if i wanted to remove the cluster at any time. Still waiting for the plugs though. So far it has been time consuming.

Camarokid01

I take it that is a 5" tach also? but what size are the little guages?

Thanks for writing out everything, now I just gotta price it all out and and save up

StangKiller

They advertise that to fit 82-92 but it don't look like it would fit 90-92 like they say it will, 90-92 have completely different clusters.

Kingtal0n

<b>I take it that is a 5" tach also? but what size are the little guages? </b>

right 5" tach / speedo.

the others are the 2 1/4" i think. not the 2 5/8", the smaller ones. I dont remember the exact size tho...

and camaros have the same cluster to deal with as fire birds. I just ripped it all out. you dont need it. just tear it out. I traced the cluster, however, to find out which ones ran to the 12V+ for the signals, and the one for the fuel guage, but other than that... its all garbage.

Pat Hall

iTrader: (31)

OMG!!! Tacky as hell looking and insanely overpriced! I wouldn't insult either of my babies with one of those setups. I could do a better looking cluster in my garage using the stock housings. I also own a 69 camaro with the factory gauges. The setup they had for the 69 looks like something out of one of my 3 a.m. nightmares! Yukk!

Pat Hall

iTrader: (31)

Actually I can think of at least one gauge setup that looks worse than these. At least this setup uses analog style gauges, unlike the dakota digital one I saw in the latest issue of Camaro Performance magazine that they installed in a 68 Camaro. You'd probably get in a wreck on a bright sunny day trying to read the digital readout on those suckers!

92 zzz28

Yeah i agree completely. Those Dakota Digital things are just horrible. A friend put at set in his 57 Belair and I hate it. He likes it but it looks so out of place its not funny. Ruins his entire intirior I think.