My idea here is to use a flat piece of 18 ga. steel that will be cut to fit the front of the instrument housing. The steel flat piece will be notched such that it will allow the black trim piece to fit the tab on the left and right side of the instrument housing as well as the nipple on the bottom of the housing and the factory screws will secure all three pieces together. Will use hole saws to make the openings in the steel piece for the gauges. Once its all fit up then I will take it back apart and paint the steel piece.
The steel piece is the reason I am leaving the plastic lens out of the arrangement as they are about the same thickness. That is its not necessary with the Autometer gauges. I guess putting this off for over five years is paying off as I looked at this multiple times and just was not sure how to go about it. I literally was just looking at the two pieces from the side and that is when the plate idea hit me and then I saw how 1WLD BRD did his and liked the result.
Sounds easy enough so I am sure there will be issues...
This is the black trim piece that goes in between the instrument housing and the dash trim. There is also a clear lens that goes on the front of the black trim piece but I am not going to use that.
These are pictures of the black trim piece with the stripped instrument housing:
I knew I saw one more somewhere and for the life of me could not remember. Thanks for the reminder. I really like the pro street one but I am not loosing my AC here in Oklahoma. I think I am leaning towards something like what 1WLD BRD did on his dash. I already have three gauges (fuel pressure, water temp, and oil pressure) over in the passenger side dash panel with some PVC pipe angle mounts I made on the table saw.
Angle brackets drying after paint:
Mounted in the passenger dash trim:
View from driver seat (tach and shift light are no longer there):
So what I have left is the speedo, tach, volt, and fuel level which will be installed in the instrument cluster. I also have a billet tbird emblem that I had made and I am working on figuring out how to put the turn signals in the wings and the high beam in the body of it.
I was curious if anyone has gone down the path of a complete aftermarket gauge install on the 83-84 cars as I have only seen a couple.
deathbypsi used what looks to be an ABS plate attached to the trim ring around the instrument cluster (one with the AC vent) and used some angled adapters on the speedo and tach and it looks like this:
1WLD BRD also did one and his plate appear to be behind the trim ring around the cluster and looks like this:
Has anyone else done this on an 83 or 84 car? If so can you throw me the link to the thread or if no thread post some pics? I am starting on one for my 83 and have a good idea on how its going to happen but I am not opposed to "borrowing" someone else's way of doing it to save myself any mistakes. I am taking pictures and making notes so when I get done or as progress happens I will start a thread on how I do mine in case anyone else wants to do this the way I end up doing it or just borrow ideas.
1WLD BRD found out that you have to put a keyed 12V+ to the green/red stripe wire in the instrument cluster wires to get the alternator to charge so I have made note of that.
This solves the issue with the H4 bulb on the high beam side. You may be able to simply remove the two wires from the two pr0ng factory connector, remove the three wires from the LMR three pr0ng connector, and then insert the two factory wires into the LMR three pr0ng connector. This will allow you to use H4 bulbs in all four headlights.
I sourced used low beam connectors for my conversion and run four H4 bulbs.
I would suggest that you power the lights off of relays and not the stock wiring as the H4's will draw more current. You simply use the factory wiring as 12V+ triggers for the relays.
So the plan is to get it out this Memorial Day weekend and burn off the old gas as there was more in the tank than I thought. After that I am going to dive into the instrument cluster and try to figure out how to get the Autometer gauges I have had for over 5 years finally installed. I have three of the gauges installed now and I forgot how much I like them and that got me going again on the instrument cluster. The speedo is a 140 mph unit that is pulse driven so that will get rid of the speedo cable which is going to die a miserable death as I just cannot get it away from the long tubes.
Other than that I need to figure out a way go get the seats lower in the car as my head is near touching the headliner. I have the Griggs upper subframes in the car so I may end up having to modify the seat frame to drop them around it a bit. I did find out that Corbeau has an option to shave 1" off the foam seat bottom so I am going to look at doing that as well.
I finally broke down and bought new tires for mine as the Yokohama AVS 100's were a little over 15 years old...yikes. Ended up with 245/40R17 Dunlop Direzza Star Spec Z3's on the front and 275/40R17 Nitto 555RII's on the rear.
Well that sucks on the clutch cable and hopefully its just that and an easy fix and you get some quality time with the mistress (at least that is what mine gets called).
1985 Mustang GT was the first car to get a roller motor and by this I mean a roller lifter cam motor. The 302W roller motors have the same firing order as the 351W. The '85 GT also was the first year of the serpentine belt set up with the reverse rotation water pump.
