Well, it seems like a year ago that I was posting "What gauges should i get?" (it was). Here is the result of a year of selection, discrimination, frustration, and (for one fine man) molding.

Mr. Frank Lee Junior. I am forever in his debt (just kidding, I paid him ). Most of you know of his gauge pods. They resemble the intake manifold on a V6 and hold gauges where the center speaker was. Well, I asked him to do something he'd never done: Make me a quad gauge 60mm pod (old thread here).
He did it, it's beautiful. Here's the results.










Yep, pretty nice isn't it Anyway, I decided on the Defi BF series gauges. Beautiful gauges, Defi accuracy, and a perfect fit for my new quad-60mm pod.

 

Anyway, to make a long story short, these gauges have a white backlight (available in red, but i didn't like how they looked). I didn't want a mis-matched cluster of gauges, so I had to get some white lit faces for my main gauges (thread here: here ). That was taking too long, so I made them myself from the stock gauges. Painstakingly removed the faces, and SANDED the red film from the face.





This proved to be difficult, and even worse was that the stock lights are incandescent, thus yellowish. Not satisfactory.

 

Grabbed some white LED bulbs from superbrightleds.com and the result is pretty good I am going to add 2 or 3 more LEDs the next time I remove my cluster, there is some unevenness that I'd like to eliminate.








And, put it all together, and what do you get???? PERFECTION!

 

 

Part II coming soon.... Defi D-series A/F gauge

Questions and comments welcome

 

Damn, I have the exact same setup with the tri-pod cluster. Why the hell didn't he start making the quad when I bought mine? Damn you Frank!!! (just kidding, of course - I love my pod).

Very nice, very nice. What gauges (meaning what they monitor) did you chose? I have the BF series for EGT, Fuel Pressure, and Oil Temp. I kept the red on the stock cluster, and frankly it still blends in - not sure I'd have gone as far as you did with the sanding, but you setup will blend perfectly, but lots of work on your part.

Car guys are nuts, plain and simple.

Beast

 

Those gauges are (from left to right) Boost Pressure, Water Temp, Fuel Pressure, Exhaust Temperature. A/F will be going on the A-pillar

 

Well, you were still in the process of posting the pictures while I was posting, so now I see you did boost, water temp, fp, and egt. Once you got the wide panel pic up, all I can say is.

Two thumbs up - WAY up.

Beast

 

What peaks did you choose?

Beast

 

Haven't yet

 

wow...Frank does nice work...

and about the sanding...wow...that's **** BUT NICE NICE WORK!

 

You wouldnt happen to of taken some pictures of your LED placement and wiring would you? I have been considering LED's for some time (Even ordered a ton of them) but have been worried it would come out looking like a hack job. Yours turned out very nice though.

Thanks,
~Kris

 

No I wouldn't. The LEDs are in the stock bulb locations, but i plan to add 2 or 3 additional mounts next time i'm in there. They were actually from http://autolumination.com ..The bulbs look like this:


Size 194, 5-led matrix


Size 74 single-led

 

shows you how far we car guys will go for the ladies, and by ladies i mean our cars...............haha, i know were you live. right were the arrow is pointing. and about your setup all i have to say is B.U.T FULL

 

Very nice setup, it seems that Frank's pods were meant to hold Defi gauges...

One of these days, I may get a quad 52mm from Frank and add a Fuel Pressure gauge. He does great work and the Defis are extremely high quality and functional gauges.

 

Lots of work and it shows, nice job!

 

Yup...I just nutted.

If I hadn't invested almost a grand in my setup, I'd think about that, but then I'd be copying.

That's some killer work. Nice one!

 

shitty job..i can do better...............

 

thats insane!!! i love what you did to the stock gauges

 

Rynberg -

When I got my first pod from Frank, I got the 52mm, but an ordering snafu with Jason had him send me Defi 60's. Frank was kind enought to just let me exchange the pods and only pay the price differential (Frank is definitely good in my book just for that), and once they went in, I was glad for the mistake. The 60's balance well (as you can see from these photos) - the 52's might be just a bit too small.

ymmv.

Beast

 

Well, I thought the 52mm would be too small but I went with them anyway -- I've been running Franks tripod and 52mm Defis for almost 2 years now and I think they're a perfect size. I can usually tell fairly easily with just a quick glance what the readings on all three gauges are. I admit this would likely be easier with the 60mm but after being used to the 52mm, they might just look too big.

 

NICE!!

idk, for some reason, it throws the whole interior off with the center pods..i mean 2 is already an overkill, when i see 3 or 4, its like whoa!! thats too much!! lol

but yours is nice, i have the same in dash dvd monitor, is that the avic-n1?

 

Beautiful. I really hate the "red" lighting of the stock gauges. When I had the option for my pod-gauges, I went back to "white light" for back-lighting. So much more legibile, IMHO.

:-) neil

BTW: I finally found out why "red" lights are used in SOME aircraft. Glare. Today, most are white or greenish-white back-lit.

 

No, AVH-7500DVD and below it is the AVIC-80DVD

Actually not QUITE true. Red is the light wavelength that your eyes are most responsive to. Red is the best backlight for night driving because your pupils don't need to contract at all to focus the lower intensity light. Thus when you look from the road to your speedometer and back, you don't have to "adjust" to the night road again. The more you know...

 

ahh you rich bastard.. nice gauges.. setup looks awesome