midnight_7

i wanna install some sutometer gauges under my panasonic deck.

have some questions:

1. so far, all the 3 group meters (autometer)have the lower edges of the frame rounded....for those who have done this, what do u use to fab a panel to install tino the lower din?

2. r these gauges "plug n play"?

3. for those who have this in their cars, can you post pics and some info on what kind of meters they are and what uve done to achieve this?..or just share some info/tips on what i can do to get this done.

thanks,
Carlos

ddub

Mine are above the deck, here's a pic of what I did. All 3 gauges are autometer z series 2 1/16"





White Seven made it for me. He can make custom watercut parts out of aluminum for you for a price (obviously). All you need to do is give him the specs, or give him an idea of what you want, and he'll quote you a price. He has my sizing already, but if you want it under the deck all he'll hafta do is switch the gauges/cd holder. Anyways, here is the thread on fc3s.org forum and also a link to his site. Hope this helps.


http://clubfc3s.com/iboard/index.php...T&f=18&t=2062&

http://www.snyper.net/RX-7/

On his site, left side, there is a link for "Custom Water Cutting"

fc3seeker

CF shift ****

ddub

I dunno, is it? Haha, its just a rubber (dimpled) momo sphere shift ****.

midnight_7

thats really cool, thanks.

aince ur prolly using the gauges i wanna use......how was the install?

were they plug n play? could help me with what u did to install them? the gauges i want: oil pressure, water temp. and voltage.

thanks,
Carlos

fc3seeker

ok looking closer, it is just dimples

Your shift boot looks a bit baggy

Nice gas pedal tho

ddub

Well, for water temp you need to either drill/tap something (like the water pump housing or coolant filler neck) to the size needed (it comes with like 2 different thread sizes you can use). The coolant drain plug on the block is threaded for one of the sizes, this is what I used for my temp sender, but realize that when you take this out all of your coolant WILL drain out of the engine. As for oil pressure, you'll either have to tap some part of the oil system (just like water) and put the sender in there, or get the RB oil temperature/pressure adapter. It has two drilled/threaded holes in it ready for temp and/or pressure. If you only use one you'll have to plug the other one with a plubming plug (I got mine from home depot. This is the RB adapter:




As for voltage, I have no idea never installed one. For wiring behind the gauges, I ran all the power/lighting wires (so the lights are on all the time, day time its not noticeable) into the same butt-connector and ran 10 gauge wire out the other side. All the wires from the gauges are really small, 20 or something, not sure, so 3 power and 3 light wires running into a butt-connector with 10 gauge out was good enough I thought. I then ran the 10 gauge to the ignition wire under the steering wheel and tapped into that so that once the car is turned on the gauges will have power. I ran all the grounds into 1 butt-connector just like the power/light wires, and then ran 10 gauge out the other end of the butt-connector and ground it to metal under the shifter surround. Then all the sending wires for the gauges I ran through the firewall via a hole on the passenger side, and to keep them not visible I zip-tied them to stuff under the dash.

Hope that helps, let me know if you need further info.

ddub

Hehe, yes the shift boot is fairly large, looks really baggy in that pic but in real life it looks good. It is momo as well and has a threaded top to screw into the shift ****.

The pedals used to be chromed out bling bling pedals that light up red (when the headlights are turned on), but I painted them gunmetal for a better/non-bling bling look. Right now my stereo surround, shifter surround, center vents, inside door handle accents, and idiot light surround are painted gunmetal. I think it made it all look a lot better, its not really noticeable and "hey look at me" type thing, more a subtle change that went with the gray dash better.

casio

may we see your interior ?

ddub

My interior? What parts? Here are pics of the pieces I've painted gunmetal, excluding the installed pic of the pedals, just during the painting process.













In addition to the red pedals that are painted gunmetal, I have 4 red LED's behind the center vents, and I am soon adding 4 more, 2 on each side in the side vents. Here are 2 pics of the LED's, one with light one without, but this is without the vents/surround in place.





With the vents in place at night it gives an awesome red glow in the vents, I really like it. My friend calls it rice, but I don't care, I think it looks cool.


Here is a pic during my weight reduction process (removing all the sound deadening tar/mats). NOTE, All my carpet (except storage bins) are still in there, as well as panels.





I also have black Corbeau GT racing seats and half of my black carpet just came in the mail today which I will be putting in. Then later I will be putting in the rear with black speaker surrounds and I'm going to paint my door sill covers black. Some day I'll convert the dash/all panels to black too.

Let me know if you want any other pics or pics of specific things.

ddub

Here I just went and snapped some more, hope this is adequate. This includes what I did with the carpet since i ditched the storage bins/etc. in the rear (btw, future plans after the black carpet is to get a section of black carpet to cover where the storage bins used to be, custom cut to fit the curve of that area so the front carpet will flow to the rear along that groove), my momo steering wheel, the led lights at night, the pedals lit up at night, the seats, and the bolt coming out from the bottom for my pinion snubber Enjoy, let me know if you have any further requests.

PS - sorry for thread jacking

*NOTE*
I made the pics smaller so it wouldn't suck as much for loading like the other ones I posted, and sorry some of them are a bit blurry, it was hard to see if they were in focus or not in the dark.

fusion-turbo

Jeez am i the only guy with a crappy interior?

poor college student

dDuB, is your alpine the cd/mp3 player? if so, i have the same one... and may i ask, how much did you get the gauge mount for? and how is the metal gauge bracket held in place?

ddub

Yes it is the cd/mp3 "Alpine CDA-9811 MP3"

The metal mount goes on from the back of the center surround. You'll have to drill your own holes in the metal piece, but basically you just drill the holes in the back where it lines up with the screws, then you just screw it in from the back and bam, it's all good. If you notice, the rectangle pieces on the sides of the mp3 player in front of the metal bracket, if I had left those out the metal piece would be all that you see and it would sit flush against it, but I have so many wires in the back my mp3 player wouldnt go far enough in, so I left it like that. Let me know if you need anymore clarification on this.

Also, he sells the mount for 40 bucks.

poor college student

sweet....

does the shifter get in the way of changing cd's? and any afterthoughts on putting the gauges above the stereo?

OverDriven

I have the same stereo and I learned to never buy Alpine again. That thing skips like crazy if there is even a microscopic hairline scratch on a CD. I had an old POS CD player before that would play all of my CD's...even those with a few scratches. The Alpine just sucks...about 3/4 of my CD's won't play in it, and they aren't scratched that bad. Not to mention the anti-skip only works on mild bumps...hit a hard one and the player cuts out for up to 10 seconds sometimes. Bleh...stay away from Alpine.

-Joe

ddub

Shifter has never gotten in the way once, plenty of space. Only afterthoughts I've had is how glad I am that I did it!! It's nice being able to monitor my water temp, oil temp, and a/f with a simple glance, great quality, looks good, and I've had absolutely no problems. During install I just wired everything up and consolidated as many wires as I could (ie running them all into the same line, then putting larger 10 gauge out the other side to power/ground), drilled the holes for the holder, and put it in. Install wasn't very hard and I only had to do it once. Everything fits in there pretty snug, but I have a few (lots) of extra wires behind my cd player, which is why I left the rectangle pieces in. I'd highly suggest the holder the white seven made me if you want to go this route.

ddub

I have no clue what you're talking about man, I've never had a single skip with mine, alpine is top quality. You want something that skips, get a sony cd player, I will never buy another one of those. Sure they have some nice looking "hey look at me I have a cool LED display" type look to them, but they suck. My old sony had the whole display that showed track names on cd's and custom messages and crap, but it sucked. I put in scratched POS cds into my alpine all the time with absolutely no problems and no skipping. ****, I've even gone over huge road bumps fairly fast (accident) in my car with stiff suspension and it didnt miss a beat. This alpine is one of the least skipping cd players I've ever owned.

OverDriven

No idea why they are different. One of my friends has an Alpine very similar to mine, but 1 notch lower in price, and his skips like crazy too. Maybe they have since fixed the problem, but I'm ready to rip mine out of the car. Just my personal experience with them.

-Joe

White_Seven

Also, if you want the gauges/CD player positions swapped, that's also possible. The configuration is pretty much up to you (1 gauge hole, 2, 3, etc....cd top/bottom, does not matter). I make these on a case by case basis so I don't just make a batch run and "hope they sell"

I can pretty much cut anything flat right now, though in the future I may get into some kind of bending/forming of parts.

casio

i'm sorry, this is new to me. what's a snubber?
http://home.comcast.net/~ddub114/snubber.jpg

ddub

It's a thing that goes in between the bottom of your car and the differential to keep it from banging against the bottom of the car/breaking the differential mounts. It helps a little with wheel hop and just makes the differential tighter (more stable).

Here's a thread that Amur did a while ago on it:

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...pinion+snubber


Here is another one from torquecentral.com forum in the v8 rx7 section:

http://www.torquecentral.com/showthr...pinion+snubber


I used the one from torquecentral and followed his how-to on it, worked out well. You can find it at like autozone and other places on the "Help!" brand rack. They have a website but for the life of me I cannot remember it. If you go to a store that has a help rack but doesnt have the pinion snubber part in particular, look on the back of one of the Help! packages and the website URL will be there.

ddub

Oh yah, lots of places also call them bump stops, like the ones you can use for other suspension needs, you just have to find one that is the right size and has a threaded bolt thing coming out the top.

casio

would scalliwag's solid diff mount give similar results? i believe it was (?) atkins that was having trouble with wheelhop and bought one of scalli's solid diff mounts and said the wheelhop was completely gone. he sells them fairly cheap, but i dont recall the price. i know its under $100.

ddub

I dunno, haven't heard much about them. All I know is that I'm still getting the craziest fking wheel hop when dropping the clutch at high rpms. The pinion snubber helped a bit, but there is still wheel hop, granted it is not as bad as before, but I'd like to eliminate it fully. I've been told to get an alignment too, which I should probably do, but I'm still working on getting rid of it fully.