Posted Wednesday, February 2, 2005 @ 01:38 PM      

I completed a restore on a 1965 Singer Gazelle last year and have an idea for the dash. I use the car daily to commute (about 500miles a week), I have converted it to LPG, fitted enourmous (although hidden) stereo, hands-free kit, sat nav....the list goes on. I've done all this so I can have what I want in a cheap to run car that I enjoy.

Next..

The dash, I need to do something. I started thinking about this last year when I saw several dash renovating companies at the NEC Classic show. My dash is not that bad, but what I want to do is make it good whilst adding many new features to it without changing the looks (always my quest). So I bought a second hand dash so I can take mine out and replace it with the temporary one, that way I can work on the origional dash.

I have a million questions about this project but for now I will stick to a few fundamentals.

1) What are the possibilities of changing the amp meter. I have +/-35 amp at the moment, I will be fitting a much larger alternator soon (see above!) and wondered how I could change the unit. Is it a case of getting a higher one, say +/-50 and replacing it if it's the same size? Also, is there a way to reduce the voltage going to the amp guage? By this I mean, I don't want a 50amp current going behind the dash (can't be good!!)

2) Does anyong know where I can get a modern clock workings to go in an old(but nice looking) mechanical clock. If so, can they share how they did this. there are companies that can do this, but they charge a fortune.

3) Some switches, like lights, coil kill switch (another of mine), have a high current. Is there a way of building a control box and reduce this load.

4) Does anyone know where I can get origional looking switches that match the ones I have but I can modify. My idea is to replace them all with good ones but for one I'd like to drill a small hole down the centre and feed a light through it. This could be a fibre optic with a LED at the end (I have no problem with soldering up a small circuit board). The idea here is to give the dash light switch some illumination. Either that or have a light built into the base of the switch, I would just like to keep the origional ones.

If I get any replies to these, I shall start to list 5 to 300.......!!